(Ongoing) Built Environment in Falls and ArthrITis (BE-FIT)

GERI's Role: GERI is providing the BE-FIT team with implementation science expertise to disseminate and translate their research findings to practice.

Lead: Dr Tou Nien Xiang (Research Fellow, GERI)

Age Well SG strand: Improve the physical living environment

Co-Principal Investigators: Dr Bryan Tan Yijia (Consultant, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Woodlands Health), Dr Navrag Singh (Lead Principal Investigator and Senior Scientist, Future Health Technologies, the Singapore ETH Centre)

Gap: Older adults with osteoarthritis and/or high falls risk may have difficulty navigating and moving around Singapore’s highly dense urban built environment. Currently, there is a knowledge gap on how to optimise the built environment to enhance older adults’ social participation, life-space, physical safety and psychosocial outcomes.

Planned Solution: The BE-FIT study aims to understand the relationships between the built environment with psychosocial factors, social participation and functional outcomes in a vulnerable elderly population with osteoarthritis and/or high falls risk.

Anticipated Impact: The study will identify key built environment factors associated with social participation and physical activity. GERI’s knowledge translation efforts are expected to translate study findings into recommendations, which can inform the design of interventions to improve mobility and promote physical activity in older adults with osteoarthritis and/or high falls risk.

Funding: National Research Foundation Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise Network Grant

Duration: Nov 2023 to Oct 2026