Ep. 202 - Tiffany Hughes, PhD, MPH, MBA - Assistant Professor, Midwestern University, Glendale, AZ

Dean's Chat hosts, Dr. Jensen and Richey, welcome Dr. Tiffany Hughes to Dean's Chat!

Dr. Tiffany Hughes is Assistant Professor in the Master of Public Health Program at Midwestern. She holds a Ph.D. in Aging Studies, M.P.H. in Epidemiology, and M.B.A. in Healthcare Administration. She completed post-doctoral training at the University of Pittsburgh in geriatric psychiatry. Her area of expertise is public health and aging with a focus on dementia and falls prevention. She is also interested in geriatric education and providing experiential opportunities to get students interested in working with the aging population. She became involved with the Walk with a Doc program and the Ohio Older Adult Falls Prevention Coalition while faculty at Youngstown State University. She is now a member of the Arizona Falls Prevention Coalition and their partner in the Walk with a Doc initiative with Midwestern University.

Listen as we discuss the topics that interested her as a young student and how this impacted her career. From dementia to fall risk, to prevention techniques and strategies to maintain mobility and independence we discuss how all these important topics are covered in multi-disciplinary ways. The Walk with a Doc program helps foster relationships for patients and hopes to “inspire communities through movement and conversation! With an aim to make health and happiness accessible to everyone, walk with a dock offers free walking programs in communities around the world led by local doctors, healthcare providers, or medical students. These ongoing events allow participants to safely walk, parentheses or role parentheses, learn about current health, topics, and meet new people.”

Tune in as we discuss the Midwestern University first “Walk with a Doc” Event on the Glendale campus hosted by Dean’s Chat co-host Dr. Richey! The event was a success with community, student, and faculty engagement on the topic of Fall Risk Reduction. We started the event with a welcome chat about the importance of activity/movement and its impact on fall risk reduction. In podiatry, our goal is focus on pain reduction and improvement of function specifically as it relates to the foot and ankle and lower extremity, so that our patients can maintain an active healthy lifestyle with the highest quality of life and maintain their independence. Falls are a significant problem in America. It is estimated that every second an older adult falls; One quarter of adults over 65 will hall at home and half won’t tell their healthcare provider. This leads to roughly 36 million falls, which account for ~8 million injuries contributing to 3 million Emergency Room visits and roughly 950,000 hospitalizations. What is truly alarming is that of these 950,000 hospitalizations, around 32,000 patients will die. While these are scary statistics, we focused our event on the empowerment that FALLS ARE PREVENTABLE!

There has been a lot of research around falls and fall risk prevention. We focused our discussion on the CDC’s STEADI approach to fall risk reduction which includes “screening, assessing and intervening.” The STEADI approach has been clinically shown to reduce fall risk by 20%. We distributed information to the participants about this method and discussed 3 key questions as we walked through campus. “Have you fallen in the past year?” “Do you feel unsteady when standing or walking?” “Do you worry about falling?” This helped spark conversation amongst the participants including our student “future doctors” about the importance of asking these 3 simple questions to normalize the discussion about fall risk. We hope you enjoy!

https://walkwithadoc.org/
https://www.midwestern.edu/academics/...

www.apma.org
www.stepintopodiatry.com
www.explorepodmed.org