Aging and Task-specific Training to Reduce Falls

The goal of this clinical trial is to examine the effects of a novel task-specific balance training for reducing environmental falls in community ambulatory older adults who are at-risk of falling. The main questions it aims to answer are: * Does task-specific balance training improve the ability to prevent falling when unexpected perturbations such as slips and trips occur, and/or improve balance control during self-initiated movements? * Does task-specific balance training reduce real-life falls for 18 months after training? Researchers will compare task-specific balance training with conventional balance training and treadmill perturbation-based training to examine how this novel intervention compares to established interventions for improving balance. Participants who participate in the study will be asked to do the following: * Complete a pre-training assessment of their balance control, and then be randomized to one of three training groups: 1) task-specific balance training, 2) treadmill perturbation-based training, and 3) conventional balance training * Complete their assigned training protocol for 8 weeks (2x per week for a total of 16 sessions) * Complete 2 post-training assessments of their balance control, the first being completed immediately after the training is completed, and the second being completed 18 months after the training is completed * Wear a physical activity monitor for 18 months after completing the intervention to monitor their real life falls.

NCT Number	NCT07094659
Lead Sponsor	University of Illinois at Chicago Collaborators: National Institute on Aging (NIA)
Conditions	Fall Prevention
Enrollment	315 participants
Start Date	2026-08-15
Primary Completion	2029-05-31 (estimated)
Study Completion	2029-08-31 (estimated)
Updated on ClinicalTrials.gov	2026-07-06