Focusing on Falls Among the Elderly

The MacArthur Foundation recently announced its 2009 genius grant recipients. Among them is Mary Tinetti, a physician and professor of medicine, epidemiology and public health at the Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Tinetti "has pioneered the study of a long-recognized, but previously little-investigated, public health problem in gerontology: morbidity due to falls by elderly people. Early in her career, Tinetti undertook efforts to deconstruct the prevailing notion of falls — “accidents” unavoidably associated with advanced age — to establish quantitative relationships between known risk factors and injury."

Recipients of the MacArthur genius grants receive $500,000 in support over five years with "no strings attached."