University of Illinois at Chicago
04/21/2025 | News release | Distributed by Public on 04/21/2025 08:23
Tanvi Bhatt: Predicting and preventing falls with research-based training
Tanvi Bhatt, professor of physical therapy and rehabilitation services, named 2024-25 Distinguished Researcher in Clinical Sciences. (Photo: Jenny Fontaine/UIC)
Slips in an icy parking lot or trips on sidewalk cracks are common features of life on foot. But for adults 65 and older, one such fall, even if it doesn't injure, often leads to more falls, which over time can significantly reduce mobility and cognitive and physical health.
That's why Tanvi Bhatt has spent over two decades at UIC trying to untangle what causes environmental falls such as slips and trips.
"In our lab, we deal with all of the intrinsic factors that help recovery from falls," said Bhatt, professor of physical therapy and rehabilitation services in the UIC College of Applied Health Sciences. "It took us about 15 to 20 years to understand all of this, develop interventions in our lab and implement it from lab to the community."
Bhatt's Cognitive Motor Balance Rehabilitation Laboratoryfocuses on what she calls "the three Ps:" perspection, or understanding what causes both healthy adults and those with neurological or neurocognitive disorders to fall; prevention, training people to recover from falls; and prognosis, creating tools that predict a person's fall risk.
By exposing people in safety harnesses to slips and trips in a controlled lab environment, Bhatt and her colleagues can study body kinematics and brain activity and train participants to better recover from and prevent falls. They're also discovering how people with mild cognitive impairment show different strategies when they fall compared to their healthy counterparts.
This research has materialized in rehabilitation hospitals and clinics with the implementation of fall training, slip and trip simulations and the commercialization of treadmills designed to target these disturbances.
"Clinicians are adopting this intervention," Bhatt said.
With 20 years of data, Bhatt and her collaborators are now working on fall-risk prediction models using AI and machine learning. By uploading a smartphone video of a patient walking, a physician assistant, nurse or technician can use one of the models to determine the patient's fall risk and make a recommendation to follow up with a physical therapist for prevention training.
"We're hoping that we can implement this very simple fall risk screening in every physician's office," Bhatt said.
Bhatt credits UIC's culture of mentorship for much of her growth and success, not only through the support of colleagues and past professors but also the reciprocal learning she's experienced working alongside graduate students. She is now director of the Midwest Roybal Center for Health Promotion and Translationand co-director of the Center for Health Equity in Cognitive Agingat UIC, a research center focused on understanding the factors leading to inequities in care for Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia.
"Mentors and administrators recognizing someone's potential at UIC is a big part of helping junior faculty members go up the next step," Bhatt said. "I'm so thankful to them for recognizing my potential, taking me in and training me."