A doctor who is leading ground-breaking research at Bradford looking at whether better blood pressure management in older people can reduce the risks of falls and subsequent frailty has been announced as the joint winner of a prestigious ‘Rising Star’ national award.
Dr Oliver Todd, clinical researcher and specialist registrar in geriatric medicine, is one of the recipients of the British Geriatrics Society (BGS) Rising Star Award for Research.
The British Geriatrics Society (BGS) Rising Star Awards were inaugurated in 2014 to recognise doctors, nurses and AHPs who have made exceptional contributions to the field of older people’s healthcare, early in their careers.
Funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), the four-year-long research project into blood pressure is being carried out by a team led by Dr Todd, who put the idea forward.
Dr Todd is an NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer in Geriatric Medicine in the University of Leeds’s School of Medicine. He is leading this research from the Academic Unit for Ageing and Stroke Research at University of Leeds, which is based at Bradford Institute for Health Research (BIHR), part of Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
One in three people over 65 will fall this year – often leading to immobility, hospital admissions, poor quality of life and general deconditioning which severely affects the person themselves, their families, carers and puts pressure on the health and social care system.
Dr Todd’s background research showed that the medical guidance for how to manage blood pressure in older people is really limited – both nationally and internationally – yet two out of three people over 65 take blood pressure medication.