The Prevention of Fall Injury Trial (Pre-FIT) (ISRCTN 71002650) was the largest trial of fall prevention interventions conducted to date, and was designed to answer a question of substantial public health significance:

What is the comparative effectiveness of advice, exercise and a multi-factorial fall prevention (MFFP) programme on peripheral fractures among older people living in the community?

PreFIT recruited 9,803 people from 63 general practices. The target population was people aged over 70 years who live in the community, including those living in supported accommodation but not those in residential or nursing homes.

The trial was important because unlike previous trials, it was sufficiently large to determine whether falls prevention can reduce fractures, not simply falls, and to provide insight into approaches which are most effective, cost-effective and acceptable to the population. It will provide answers that can be used by primary care practices to determine how they best advise and refer patients who are at risk of falling, but may not yet have had a fall.

Results of PreFIT are published in the New England Journal of Medicine - https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001500