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Innov Aging
Innov Aging
innovateage
Innovation in Aging
2399-5300 Oxford University Press US 

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.3335
igaa057.3335
Abstracts
Session 10250 (Late Breaking Poster)
Falls
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
Investigating Falls and Rehabilitation Use in Older Wheelchair Users from the National Health and Aging Trends Study
Nie Qiong  Rice Laura  Sosnoff Jacob  Rogers Wendy  
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois, United States
2020 
16 12 2020 
16 12 2020 
4 Suppl 1 Program Abstracts from The GSA 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting “Turning 75: Why Age Matters”906 907
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.2020This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Abstract
Falling is a serious health concern among older wheelchair users as falling may result in functional impairment, morbidity, and mortality. Researchers have examined prevention strategies of falls. However, little is known about the prevalence of falls and rehabilitation service use among wheelchair users over age 65. We analyzed a population-based data set – the National Health and Aging Trends Study– to describe trends over time of wheelchair use among older adults who completed a sample interview in this study; we further identified 417 community-dwelling older wheelchair users in wave 5, described prevalence of falls and rehabilitation service use among them and investigated indicators of fall-related rehabilitation service utilization using multinomial logistic regression. The results indicated that there was an increasing trend of wheelchair use from 2011 (7.2%) to 2019 (10.6%). Falling was a common problem (56.1%); however, only 12.1% received rehabilitation service addressing the problem of falls. Around half of rehabilitation service users reported that their functioning improved, but the effect was not lasting. Age (74-79 years old: odds ratio [OR] =2.72, 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.01-7.33; 80-84 years old: OR= 2.93, 95% CI, 1.19-7.25) and balance or coordination problem (OR= 4.70, 95% CI, 1.84-12.06) were associated with receiving fall-related rehabilitation. These data suggest that we need to understand more about the underuse of the rehabilitation services, ensure that older wheelchair users are equally utilizing the services to prevent falling and improve the long-lasting effect of the services.