Media release

23 May 2012

Kiwis Put On Thinking Caps To Help Prevent Falls

The thinking is over, now it's time for the judges to decide.

Around 600 New Zealanders entered ACC's Idea Nation competition, to share their ideas on how to prevent falls in the home involving working age people.

ACC thanks all the Kiwis who put their ‘number eight wire’ heritage into practice and entered the competition. The responses received have even prompted ACC to create a whole new award category.

“Originally, we had four prize categories, with a $10,000 prize up for grabs for the best idea from each category,” says ACC’s Public Injury Insurance Manager Sacha O’Dea. The four categories were:

• secondary students and schools

• tertiary organisations, students and staff

• business

• general public.

“Most ideas came from members of the public,” says Sacha. “But a significant number of ideas overall involved innovative ways to make ladders safer, so we decided to create an extra category, just for the best ladder safety idea.”

As a result, the judges will be handing out five prizes in all.

“Over the next four weeks, we'll be studying all the entries, and deciding on the best group of ideas,” says Sacha. “The chosen ideas go before a panel of judges, made up of ACC management and independent experts.”

Specialists with appropriate technical expertise will judge the new ladder category, with ACC aiming to announce all winners in June.

“We’re really looking forward to studying the ideas we received, because the issue of home falls has challenged injury prevention experts worldwide. As a result, there are very few evidence-based solutions for tackling the problem.”

In addition to choosing winners, ACC is also looking for good ideas to develop into business cases. “So even though people might not win, they could still see their idea come to life,” says Sacha.

Falls in the home are a significant problem in New Zealand, affecting hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders every year, with an estimated social and economic cost of around $1.8 billion.

ACC would like to thank sponsors Placemakers and Resene for supporting Idea Nation.

ENDS

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