Fairhaven's Daily Emergency

And How We Can Address It

Thank you for taking the quiz yesterday! Unfortunately, I lost a bunch of the responses when I clicked a bad button, so the response data is incomplete. As of this writing, here are the responses:

The data from this survey confirms that my misconception is shared by many of you. When I requested the EMS data from the town, I expected to see that motor vehicle-related injuries would be the most frequent type of call. My hunch was wrong! Here are the top 3 (data reported over 2.8 years):

(Not) Free Fallin’

Over the past three years¹, Fairhaven Emergency Services responded to 1,837 calls where someone was injured²³. Of those calls, the majority (1,142 or 62%) were for one type of incident: falls. According to the data, emergency services respond to an average of at least one fall a day. As far as I can see from some cursory googling, this is statistically very high. For example, before implementing a fall prevention program, 10.8% of all calls to EMS in the city in this study were for falls (calls were reduced to 8.5% via the program). In Fairhaven, 14% of all calls (including those that don’t require EMS response) are due to falls.

This should be a big concern for our town. Falls are bad. They’re a significant cause of mortality and reduced quality of life for seniors. They take up an inordinate amount of our emergency personnel’s time. And from a financial perspective for the town, they represent a significant outlay of resources. As locals may recall, the first reason the town gave for the proposed override this past was to hire additional firefighters to respond to an increase in calls.

Source: Town of Fairhaven

How We Got Here

Why does Fairhaven have such a high rate of falls? The most obvious answer is our demographics. About 22% of our population is over the age of 65, compared with a statewide average of 18% (nationwide it’s closer to 17%). And why do our demographics skew older? Town law dictates it.

It’s the same story as that of many aging suburbs in the U.S.: post-WWII, more people were able to buy houses here thanks in large part to federal policies like the GI Bill, the mortgage interest deduction, and FHA/VA loans that subsidized homeownership for many people (but not all— see redlining). As these previous generations aged, they implemented a suite of zoning regulations that made it all but impossible to build more houses like theirs (and mine), preventing the replication and thickening of our core walkable neighborhoods. This set of restrictions tends to benefit existing homeowners (of which I am one), who have watched our home values increase with the demand for housing that’s been driven in large part by restricted supply. Restrictive zoning also prevents younger people and new families from being able to move here. So here we are, with a population that’s aging in place and increasingly reliant on EMS for lift assists.

I’m perhaps naively confident that zoning reform will come to Fairhaven in the not-too-distant future. Most people in town who I talk to can at the very least get behind easing ADU restrictions, and as Michael Moore shared here last week, ADUs can be an effective gateway to allowing for incremental development on a more significant scale.

The Prescription

In the near term, what can our town do to reduce the prevalence of falls (even given our demographics)?

According to the literature, two of the most important things that communities can do to prevent falls are:

1. Increase opportunities for seniors to be physically active

2. Increase social connection for seniors

Now you see where I’m going! What encourages both physical activity and social connection among seniors? (Altogether now) Livable streets! When an older veteran can safely walk down to the Village Cafe and have coffee with some friends, he’s less likely to have a fall requiring EMS attention and more likely to be enjoying life! When seniors can walk around their neighborhoods without feeling like they have to light themselves up like Christmas trees, more of them are likely to get out there.

The prescription is clear: vibrant streets are a preventative medicine our town desperately needs. As many of you know, I’m part of the newly minted Livable Streets Committee here in town. Our mission is to create those vibrant streets. There are lots of things we hope to try to accomplish that mission. We can support the town in addressing challenging intersections that break up walking and biking routes. We can promote more things like Bike Bus, walking groups, and block parties that get people out with their neighbors. We can cash mob our walkable businesses so we continue to have more places to walk to. We don’t need to invent anything new— we just need to remember how to do community in the way our ancestors developed over millennia and only recent generations began to forget.

Over the past year, I’ve had the privilege of living a car-lite lifestyle. As I’ve tooled around on my bike, riding the bike path to drop off my kid at school and then go work out at our sweet Rec Center before doing remote work from the Sip N’ Sit, I’ve learned a valuable lesson: we don’t need to go on vacation to enjoy the quality of life that walkable streets provide— we can enjoy it here. Even those who choose (or have no choice but) to be stuck in a car for much of the day appreciate having events and places they can walk to on occasion. Livable streets are the lift that all of us— young, old, and in-between— could use more of.

1. I wanted to focus on the falls in this post, but it’s worth noting that our instincts weren’t far off— car-related calls (8 pedestrian/car and 351 car/car) are the second-highest reason for calls and I’m sure are far more injurious and costly on the whole than falls. As faithful readers are perhaps sick of reading, I posit that almost all motor vehicle-related injuries and deaths could be prevented through better infrastructure.

2. A special thanks to Chief Correia for taking the time to provide this data within hours of me inquiring about it!

3. Over 8,000 medical calls, total, but I’m zooming in on the “trauma-related” calls where people required medical attention of some sort.