ACL Innovation Lab

The purpose of this funding announcement is to create an ACL Innovation Lab (“the Lab”) that facilitates the development and scaling of effective practices that promote health and reduce injury among older adults and older adults with disabilities.The achieve this purpose, the Lab, with ACL’s direction and in collaboration with relevant stakeholders, will:Develop a taxonomy for falls prevention research through an in-depth review of falls prevention literature that allows for a structured approach to data collection.Develop relevant research questions and methods, based on that taxonomy, for conducting research using two approaches: core components and community-driven/community-based participatory research on falls prevention and related risk factors.Develop a secure, dynamic system to house the data collected and evidence developed by sub-awardees, complying with ACL’s public access plan and policy in regards to scientific or research data collected as a result of this funding.Fund a cohort of community-based aging and disability service sub-awardees to pilot these approaches, in order to understand and measure the extent to which existing interventions reduce falls and related risk factors for falls.Provide technical assistance to sub-awardees on core components, participatory research designs to measure outcomes, and structured data collection.Conduct both predictive and data analysis on research findings, and disseminate findings.Promote the scaling and sustainability of effective practices that promote health and reduce injury specific to falls prevention and related risk factors.