Lifetime Achievement Award for Work with Falls

8 June 2023

Lorraine Lovitt has been awarded the NSW Fall Prevention and Healthy Ageing Network Lifetime Achievement Award. Ms Lovitt works as our Older Persons' Patient Safety Program, Senior Improvement Lead and has held various roles in aged care, health promotion, acute and community care and residential aged care.

Ms Lovitt began her falls work in 2004 at the then NSW Department of Health, when an $8.4 million grant to progress the NSW Fall Prevention Program was awarded. Ms Lovitt was state lead on the program and helped oversee the distribution of funding, appointment of Falls Co-ordinators, supported the development of falls implementation plans across the state. This involved working closely with staff in hospitals, community and residential aged care, as well as within networks of the Agency for Clinical Innovation.

Announcing the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Network Forum on 26 May 2023, Neuroscience Research Australia senior principal research fellow Prof Stephen Lord said Ms Lovitt was a great networker, passionate about the care of older people and, as well as having played a very active role in statewide work to prevent falls, she had been crucial in translating evidence-based research findings into meaningful policy and practice.

"Lorraine is without a doubt a worthy recipient of a NSW Fall Prevention and Healthy Ageing Lifetime Achievement Award," Prof Lord said.

Through the work of Ms Lovitt and her colleagues the CEC has supported the development of significant falls prevention initiatives, including the development of the CEC Comprehensive Care – Minimising Harm model for the safe care of older people, and resources which are available for health workers across NSW.

Find out more about this important work.