Sarasota County Department of Emergency Management (Natural Disaster Assistance)

In many areas of Collier County, we are living longer, but we fall more!Just as we learned that Naples residents have the longest life expectancy in the United States 83.5 years we also learned that Collier County has the highest injury and death rate in Florida due to falls by seniors.Have we built a community that rates as the best place to live in the U.S. only to be cut down by unexpected falls that result in injury and death?Did you know that 1 in 4 seniors fall each year and 20 percent of those are hospitalized? Of those hospitalized, 11% never return home while 50 percent pass away within one year. The average death rate in Collier County for seniors who have fallen is 55 percent higher than the rest of Florida!Falling down is not an inevitable part of aging. The good news is there are steps Smart Steps that can be taken to reduce the number of serious falls among seniors. This finding brought together interested civic leaders, nonprofits and health professionals to create Step Smart whose mission is to educate the public on the Smart Steps they can take to get this problem under control.