Grant: Planning Grants

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic and often progressive disease of the central nervous system that causes a wide range of variable and disabling symptoms. Canada has some of the highest rates of MS in the world. People with MS must find ways to manage the functional consequences of MS. One commonly experienced consequence is an accidental fall. Falls are experienced by up to 60% of people with MS. Approximately half of these falls result in an injury requiring medical attention. Reduced activity, fear of falling, and social isolation are other common outcomes of falls. Despite the efforts of several individual research teams around the world, success in reducing the number, severity and consequences of falls experienced by people with MS has been limited. Many teams are engaged in overlapping or complementary studies rather than working in a coordinated way that could accelerate progress. International collaboration and partnership will enable us to pool our unique areas of expertise to produce evidence about the best ways to reduce falls frequency, severity and consequences for people with MS. Our collective capacity will be greater than that of any individual team working alone. Therefore, the purpose of this proposed project is to establish an International MS Fall Prevention Research Network whose members will collaboratively develop research protocols to advance knowledge on falls and falls prevention among people with MS. A CIHR Planning Grant would provide support for an inaugural meeting for this Network, during which a sustainable infrastructure will be developed, collaborative partnerships built, and a research protocol for a MS falls prevention intervention trial designed. By working together, our long term goal is to develop and disseminate clinically relevant knowledge that will reduce the frequency, severity and functional consequences of falls experienced by people with MS, in Canada and worldwide.