When the elderly fall or become socially isolated, a cascade of health problems tend to follow. But how practitioners tackle these problems in their day-to-day working with seniors can be worlds away from the approach suggested by academic researchers.

To get the two disparate groups on the same page, Cornell University researchers have developed a new consensus-workshop model. It brings researchers and practitioners together to share their knowledge and perspectives and to agree on research priorities, practice recommendations and dissemination methods.

"We developed this model to get evidence-based practices into the field and to put researchers and practitioners on equal footing. This helps create research that has the practice community in mind but is still scientifically rigorous," said Karl Pillemer, co-director of the Cornell Institute for Translational Research on Aging (CITRA) and professor of human development at Cornell, who helped develop the model. "Now, CITRA can take a pressing problem for older people and ask researchers and practitioners together how to best approach it."

To date, CITRA has sponsored two consensus workshops.

Last year one focused on falls, and its subsequent research review is available at http://www.citra.org. To prevent older people from falling, the workshop recommended, for example, that seniors should be assessed in their own homes, interventions should be customized for different cultures, and exercise programs should be tailored for each individual.

On March 6, a consensus workshop in New York City focused on social isolation in the elderly.

"The group agreed, for example, that the interventions most likely to be effective are group activities that include discussion, self-help, exercise and interpersonal skills training activities," said Elaine Wethington, CITRA co-director, who helped facilitate the workshop. "They also recommended working to strengthen naturally occurring networks among older adults living in the same neighborhood."

The workshops begin with a cutting-edge, nontechnical summary of the scientific literature on the problem. Based on this document, several dozen selected academicians and practitioners come together to work toward a consensus.

The workshops, Pillemer said, emerged from a community-based research partnership involving social science and medical researchers at Cornell and an organized group of some 250 aging-service organizations in New York City.

"The model provides a facilitated, nonthreatening environment for researcher-practitioner dialogue to take place," said Myra Sabir, a postdoctoral fellow and lead organizer of the workshops. "We think that the model not only makes researchers more aware of the real-world problems practitioners face and makes practitioners more aware of research, but also promotes innovative ideas for intervention programs because researchers and practitioners develop ideas and priorities together."

CITRA is a collaboration of social science, clinical research and mental health units that unites community practitioners with researchers from Cornell's Ithaca campus; research clinicians in geriatric medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College in Manhattan; and psychiatric researchers at Cornell's Psychiatric Division of the Cornell Institute for Geriatric Psychiatry in Westchester, N.Y. CITRA, one of four Edward R. Roybal Centers for Translational Research on Aging, is funded by the National Institute on Aging.