Twice a week at the Chapel Hill Senior Living Center in Cumberland, Rhode Island, residents gather for a seated exercise class called Rev6 Vitality, developed by Dr. Edythe Hues. The program is delivered live via Zoom, with guidance from a life-enrichment specialist who circles the room to ensure residents are doing the exercises safely.
For four of these sessions last year, residents were joined by Brown researchers—Ellen McCreedy, associate professor of health services, policy and practice, and Ann Reddy, MPH ’07, research development project director in the Long-Term Quality & Innovation Lab (Q&I) at Brown—who were assessing Rev6 as a way of preventing falls and injuries among the elderly. Other team members included Rosa Baier, director of Q&I and Olivia Taylor, an MPH student at Brown. Together, they are partnering with Meridian Senior Living, an assisted living organization with multiple centers across the U.S, including Chapel Hill.
“Ellen and I took the Rev6 class ourselves so we could experience what was happening firsthand,” Reddy said. “Then we conducted interviews with staff at Chapel Hill and Meridian corporate leadership, and held a focus group with residents.”
Here’s what they found: Residents and staff consistently identified increased strength, balance and walking ability, reduced pain and an overall sense of emotional well-being as a result of these exercises. “And also, social,” one staff member said. “People forget the social, the brain health and the social. [Residents are] saying, ‘Hey, I’m looking forward to coming to this class.’”
This study was funded by the School of Public Health’s Office of Community Engagement through a donor-supported Community-Academic Partnership Award in 2024. Recognizing the potential for scaling this work, McCreedy and her team successfully applied for fresh funding from the CDC for a broader fall-prevention study, which began in September 2025.
“The Community-Academic Research Partnership Award was tremendous and essential for this type of project. It allowed us the time to really engage with Meridian thoughtfully and to collaboratively develop the study,” Reddy said. “There’s a lot of relationship-building that has to happen and that work is typically unfunded, because when you apply for something like an NIH grant, the partnership is expected to already exist. So having funding specifically for this stage of project development was huge.”
