Understanding Dance for Falls Prevention

September 9, 2026 updated by: Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust

Understanding Dance for Falls Prevention: A Mixed Methods Study of Perceptions, Experiences and Rehabilitation Treatment Components.

Falls are common among older adults, and can lead to both physical and emotional problems. The new World Falls Guidelines suggest that falls prevention programmes should take into account a person's individual priorities and beliefs.

At the Older Persons Assessment Unit (OPAU), physiotherapy focuses on helping patients improve their abilities to do everyday tasks and enhancing their quality of life. Personalised treatment is offered to make sure it's as effective and long-lasting as possible.

One of the main programmes run in the department is a class designed to improve strength and balance, but even people who complete these classes often struggle to stick to exercise when the classes end.

Dance classes are a fun, creative, and social way to exercise, and OPAU has worked with Breathe Arts Health Research to explore dance as a treatment for older adults at risk of falls. So far, the results show that people who chose dance for strength and balance saw the same physical benefits as those who did the more traditional strength and balance exercises, but this evidence on its own isn't enough to widely recommend dance as a way to lower falls risk.

To build stronger evidence for dance as a safe and effective activity for reducing fall risks, this project will explore how participants and dance instructors feel about the programme. It will also look at the different exercises in the dance sessions to understand what works best to help improve strength and balance and reduce the risk of falling.

Study Overview

Status

Not yet recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

Background to the Project:

Every year in the United Kingdom (UK), falls among older people cost the National Health Service (NHS) over £2.3 billion. When including costs of other services such as social care needed due to hip fractures from falls, the total yearly cost in the UK increases to £4.4 billion. These figures show just how expensive falls can be for healthcare systems.

However, the problem is not just about the money. Falls have a huge impact on older people's lives, often related to fear of falling, and can lead to problems such as reduced independence in everyday activities, lower quality of life, and social isolation. As the number of older adults increases, these issues are expected to get worse.

This means there is a need for proactive measures to prevent falls. This is important to help older people live better lives, as well as to make best use of healthcare resources. One of the most effective ways to reduce falls is exercise, especially exercises that improve balance and muscle strength. The main thing that makes exercise programmes successful is whether or not people can stick to the exercise programme once started.

Scientific Rationale:

All the causes of falls in older people are not fully understood because they can be triggered by many different factors. There are also many different programmes and strategies for preventing falls, and these can include things like exercise, medication review, and balance training. Some programmes use a combination of these methods.

Exercise focussing on strength and balance in particular has been shown to reduce fall rates by almost one-third. The Otago and Falls Management Exercise (FaME) programmes are two examples of exercise regimes that have been proven to be effective.

Even though the advice to be physically active exists, not everyone participates in exercises that challenges their balance. Research in Australia showed that older people were not likely to take part in exercises that help improve balance and strength, even though these exercises could reduce their risk of falls.

One type of exercise that's gaining attention is Tai Chi, a form of exercise that helps with balance and strength. It has been shown to reduce fall rates by up to 37%. Tai Chi involves structured movements that are controlled and flowing, and work in all directions, making it great for improving movement control and balance.

Dance is another form of exercise that challenges balance. Like Tai Chi, it involves continuous, controlled movement, but it also includes elements of social interaction and cognitive (thinking) challenges, which could help reduce fall risk in different ways. Some studies have shown that dance can improve physical strength and function, but more research is needed to determine how effective it is specifically for preventing falls.

While there's some uncertainty about how best to use dance for fall prevention, experts agree that dance is worth investigating further. One challenge is that dance programmes can vary a lot, in a way that Tai Chi does not, making it harder to draw conclusions about dance being able to reduce falls. New research frameworks, like the Rehabilitation Treatment Specification System (RTSS), can help researchers to describe exactly how dance interventions are thought to work and what they aim to improve.

In addition to studying the effectiveness of dance programmes, it's important to consider how dance instructors lead these sessions and how older people feel about participating. Understanding the motivations of older adults who choose dance to reduce fall risk will give us better insight into how to improve these programmes.

Dance for Strength and Balance Programme:

In the Older Person's Assessment Unit, we've been running a dance programme called Dance for Strength and Balance (DSAB) for older adults at risk of falling. This programme was jointly created with the Breathe Arts Health Research charity and funded by Guy's & St. Thomas' Charity, offering an alternative to traditional strength and balance exercises.

Physiotherapists compared this dance programme with a traditional strength and balance group, and found no significant difference in four measures of physical ability and falls risk, although the traditional group did show more improvement in one test. Despite this, people who participated in the dance programme reported positive experiences.

However, there is still some hesitation in the healthcare community about using dance for fall prevention since more research is needed to prove its effectiveness. This is where this project comes in, aiming to continue testing and refining the programme to make it better and easier to understand.

The investigators are in a unique position because we have hands-on experience in designing, running, and evaluating a dance programme for older people at risk of falling. What's still missing from the research is more detailed feedback from the participants and dance instructors. There is a need to understand why older people choose dance, what benefits they feel they're getting, and how instructors adapt the programme for their needs. Also, as dance might not be an exercise type that everybody wants to do, the investigators also want to hear from those that choose not to take part in the dance classes about why they made their choice.

Aim of the Study The goal is to explore the effectiveness of dance programmes for fall prevention and to understand the experiences and perceptions of older adults who participate in them.

Study Type

Observational

Enrollment (Estimated)

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Contact

Name: Carrie-Ann Wood, BSc(Hons) Physiotherapy
Phone Number: +442071882091
Email: carrie-ann.wood@nhs.net

Study Contact Backup

Name: Katie Noone, BSc Physiotherapy
Phone Number: +442071882091
Email: katie.noone@nhs.net

Study Locations

United Kingdom
- London
  - London, London, United Kingdom, SE1 9RT
    - Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust
    - Contact:
      
      Carrie-Ann Wood, BSc(Hons) Physiotherapy
      
      Phone Number: +442071882091
      
      Email: carrie-ann.wood@nhs.net
    - Contact:
      
      Katie Noone, BSc Physiotherapy
      
      Phone Number: +442071882091
      
      Email: katie.noone@nhs.net
    - Principal Investigator:
      
      Carrie-Ann Wood, BSc(Hons) Physiotherapy

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Sampling Method

Non-Probability Sample

Study Population

Patient participants will be recruited from patients referred to the outpatient physiotherapy service at the Older Persons Assessment Unit (OPAU) at Guy's & St Thomas' NHS Trust (GSTT).

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

Consecutive patients referred to the SABG following initial assessment by a physiotherapist
And are found to have a strength and/or balance impairment
And are deemed appropriate for group exercise intervention
And are able and willing to be interviewed and recorded, with or without a family member or carer to support with language or cognition limitations
Patients ≥ 65 years of age

Exclusion Criteria:

• Patients (or proxy carer) that do not provide written consent to be interviewed and recorded for the purposes of the study
- Or who are unable to follow a supervised exercise programme or take part in a group exercise class (defined by the need for hands on assistance, this will be determined at the initial physical assessment by the physiotherapist)
- Or who are unable to follow instructions and taken part in conversational English to a sufficient level to be able to participate in a group exercise class (either independently or with a carer)

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

Number of groups / cohorts

Cohorts and Interventions

Group / Cohort	Intervention / Treatment
older adults	Other: Dance Supervised dance targeting strength and balance improvements Other: Resistance exercise Supervised resistance exercise targeting strength and balance improvements in older adults

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Semi-structured survey responses Time Frame: Baseline	Custom questionnaire comprising 12 textual short answer questions, 2 dichotomous response questions and 3 multi-category response questions. These questionnaires are to explore participant perceptions around dance and traditional strength and balance exercise classes.	Baseline
Textual data from focus group Time Frame: To study completion, average 9 months	Transcribed focus group session with dance class participants to explore the perceptions of mechanism of action, barriers and facilitators of dance as a falls risk reduction method.	To study completion, average 9 months
Textual data from semi-structured interview Time Frame: To study completion, an average of 9 months	Transcribed semi-structured interview with dance instructor to explore the perceptions of mechanism of action, barriers and facilitators of dance as a falls risk reduction method, and adaptations for this specific population.	To study completion, an average of 9 months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Segmentation of class video recording into pertinent exercise events Time Frame: To study completion, average 9 months	Video footage from 3 classes (one at the beginning, one in the middle and one at the end). The sessions will be broken down into treatment events, anchored to treatment ingredients and provided a timestamp within NVivo Software. Treatment events will be further split into 90 second segments (epochs). Dependent upon duration of treatment event, 2-3 epochs will be picked across the beginning, middle and end of the epoch. 1 participant will be randomly allocated to each epoch prior to analysis.	To study completion, average 9 months

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust

Collaborators

King's College London

Breathe Arts Health Research

Investigators

Study Director: Jeremy Corcoran, PhD, Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Estimated)

September 1, 2026

Primary Completion (Estimated)

November 1, 2026

Study Completion (Estimated)

January 1, 2027

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

May 15, 2026

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

September 9, 2026

First Posted (Actual)

September 16, 2026

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

September 16, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

September 9, 2026

Last Verified

September 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

362340

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

IPD Plan Description

We will not be sharing IDP as all data will be anonymised or pseudonymised for this work

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

Understanding Dance for Falls Prevention