Abstract
Falls can have serious impacts on the health, wellbeing and daily mobilities of older adults. Falls are a leading cause of injury and death amongst older adults and outdoor falls comprise a substantial proportion of pedestrian injuries. As well as physical injuries, the psychological impacts of experiencing a fall can result in older adults getting out of the house less often, resulting in lower levels of physical activity and social connection. Despite the known consequences of falls, relatively little research considers the impact of the urban built environment on falls among older adults. This research aimed to explore the experiences of older adults in the urban environment, falling and the fear of falling outdoors. We conducted an online survey with adults aged 50+ using a participatory mapping survey tool and a convenience sample. The study area was Greater Christchurch, New Zealand. Results suggest that both perceived accessibility and neighbourhood conditions are independently associated with fear of falling, after controlling for frequency of falling, gender and activities of daily living. Our findings demonstrate the need for much better understandings of the relationships between the urban environment, outdoor mobility, fear of falling and falling among older adults and we propose suggestions for future research.
Highlights
Being mobile is important for older adults’ wellbeing
After cleaning the data to remove those who did not live in the Greater Christchurch region (n = 13) and those who did not respond to key questions the clean dataset contains 129 respondents
Our results indicate that poor neighbourhood conditions and poor perceived accessibility are associated with a fear of falling among survey respondents
Summary
Being mobile is important for older adults’ wellbeing. Mobility and wellbeing [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Mobility facilitates access to meaningful activities and destinations outside the home. Movement itself is associated with both physical and mental wellbeing. The potential to move, even if movement does not occur, is associated with wellbeing; for example, having the physical ability, financial or material resources that enable travel even if a person chooses not to travel. Walking is an important mode of daily mobility, especially for older adults. Physical activity is associated with cardio-vascular health, lower levels of obesity, diabetes, improved mood, better social connections and reduced falls risk. There is considerable policy attention being paid to the concept of active ageing, with a focus on walking as a means to achieve recommended levels of physical activity
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