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By Maria Lironi
Gallagher
Dr. Elaine Gallagher (Centre on Aging) is the recipient of the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of BC’s (CUFA BC) 2008 Career Achievement Award, for using her pioneering research on fall prevention to train health professionals and prompt seniors to modify their living environments.
Twenty per cent of seniors who sustain a hip fracture die within a year of the injury and 90 per cent of hip fractures are due to falls. To prevent this, Gallagher has identified risk factors for falling and developed a range of measures to prevent falls. These include obvious things like getting cities to repair uneven sidewalks. They also include recommendations to doctors to conduct regular medical assessments of their older patients for falling risks, and to pharmacists to watch for drug interactions that could affect a senior’s sense of balance.
Gallagher earned her Master of Nursing from Duke University in 1976. In 1980, she came to UVic as a nursing professor, earned her doctorate from Simon Fraser University in 1988, and became a full professor at UVic in 1997. In 2002 she was named top nurse researcher in Canada by the Canadian Association of Nurse Researchers.
The CUFA BC honour is just one of many awards Gallagher has received in the past few months, including SFU’s Outstanding Alumni Award (2007) and an honorary mention for the BC Premier’s Awards (2007).
CUFA BC represents approximately 4,300 university professors, instructors, academic librarians and other academic staff at five BC universities. The awards are presented annually to recognize faculty members at BC public universities who use their research and scholarly work to make contributions to the wider community.
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