Our Region Co-Chairs share an update every quarter, highlighting key developments, successes, and priorities from across their region.
From World Falls to Neighbourhood Health: A North West Perspective
Dr Nishma Harker and Dr Scott Mather, BGS North West Co-Chairs
There was a real sense of excitement across the North West as we welcomed the 3rd World Falls Congress to Manchester in June. Bringing an international meeting of this scale to our region was a fantastic opportunity for colleagues from across the UK and much further afield to come together and share the latest thinking and innovation around falls, frailty, rehabilitation and healthy ageing. And, perhaps appropriately for a conference focused on falls prevention, Manchester gave us a rather different challenge: it was hot!
For those of us accustomed to the more traditional Manchester weather, three days of sunshine and soaring temperatures meant that many of us arrived at sessions looking rather more enthusiastic about hydration than usual. But we certainly made the most of it.
What struck us most was the breadth of work taking place internationally in falls prevention and management. The programme moved well beyond the traditional concept of falls as simply an acute clinical problem. There was a strong emphasis on prevention, rehabilitation, bone health, digital approaches, community-based care and translating research into everyday clinical practice. For us, one of the particularly interesting areas was the growing focus on falls prevention in care homes. Care homes are an important part of the falls prevention landscape, with residents often living with frailty, multimorbidity, cognitive impairment and significant functional impairment. It was also a useful reminder that falls prevention cannot sit within one professional group or one part of the health service. It requires collaboration between medicine, nursing, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, pharmacy, social care, care homes, primary care and, importantly, older people themselves. The conference theme of moving “hospital to community” therefore felt particularly relevant. If we are serious about preventing falls rather than simply responding to them, much of the work inevitably needs to happen before someone reaches hospital.
It was therefore particularly special to welcome Professor Jugdeep Dhesi, President of the British Geriatrics Society, to Manchester Royal Infirmary during her visit to the North West. We were delighted to have the opportunity to showcase some of the work taking place across our services, including our frailty and same-day emergency care services and surgical liaison POPS work. It was a chance to discuss not only what we are doing now, but also what we think geriatric medicine needs to look like in the future. A key part of our conversation was the evolving role of geriatricians outside the traditional hospital setting.
As the health and care system increasingly focuses on neighbourhoods, prevention and care closer to home, there is an important question for our specialty: how do we take the expertise of geriatric medicine into neighbourhoods in a way that genuinely improves outcomes for older people living with frailty?
This is not simply about moving an outpatient clinic into a community building. It is about thinking differently about how specialist expertise is organised around populations and neighbourhoods, working alongside primary care, community services, social care, care homes and voluntary sector partners, while retaining the specialist skills that geriatricians bring. The NHS is now placing a much greater emphasis on neighbourhood health, with the ambition to deliver more care at home or closer to home, improve integration between services and move towards more proactive and preventative models of care. The future role of the geriatrician may therefore look increasingly different from the traditional model of a hospital specialist responding to referrals. We may need to think about geriatricians as part of neighbourhood multidisciplinary teams, supporting proactive population health management, care homes, primary care and community services, while also providing specialist input into urgent and emergency pathways. The World Falls Congress provided a powerful international perspective on why this matters. Our conversations with the BGS President provided an opportunity to think about how those principles might translate into practice here in the North West.
Looking forward
We are now looking forward to our BGS North West region meeting, which will take place on 27 November 2026 and will have a particular focus on urgent care in the community, Hospital at Home and neighbourhood-based models of care. The programme will also include a focus on nutrition. As discussed, focus on community care feels particularly relevant at this point in the NHS's journey. There is considerable national momentum behind neighbourhood health, but the important question is what this actually means for older people living with frailty and for the professionals caring for them.
How do we move from a hospital-based model to one that genuinely supports people to remain well and independent in their own communities?
How do we make sure that specialist geriatric expertise is available where it is needed, rather than assuming that every complex older person needs to come to hospital?
And how do we make sure that prevention, nutrition, rehabilitation, falls prevention and proactive frailty care become part of the everyday fabric of neighbourhood health rather than separate initiatives?
These are big questions, but the North West is well placed to explore them. We have a strong community of geriatricians, nurses, AHPs, primary care colleagues, researchers and wider partners who are already developing innovative approaches across the region.
Now, through our North West regional meeting, we hope to continue that conversation and learn from what is working, being honest about what is not, and collaborating on how we can build services that better support older people to live well, remain independent and receive the right care in the right place.
