Simon Peter Lokomo, MPH. Global Training Officer with The HALO Trust, and the person who writes everything on this site.
Why this site exists
I kept meeting the same person. Somewhere in their forties or early fifties, holding down a job, and suddenly responsible for decisions about an aging parent that nobody had prepared them for. Should we put grab bars in? Will Medicare pay for any of this? Is that medication the reason she keeps falling? Is he sleeping badly, or is something else going on?
They were nearly always stressed, and nearly always working it out alone, in the evenings, from whatever came up in a search.
What struck me, coming from a public health background, is that a great deal of this has already been studied. There is solid research on what prevents falls, on which home modifications actually work, on what the evidence says about medications, sleep and confusion. The problem is not that the knowledge does not exist. It is that it sits in journals and clinical guidelines, written for other researchers, while the people who need it most are making urgent decisions with none of it.
HomeAgingGuide exists to close that gap. My aim is to take what the research genuinely shows, translate it into plain English, and be honest about the limits, so that families can make informed decisions rather than guesses.
About me
I hold a Master of Public Health from City St George’s, University of London. My training is in population health, which shapes how I approach everything on this site: look at what the evidence says across many people, be careful about the difference between association and cause, and pay as much attention to what does not work as to what does.
I am Global Training Officer with The HALO Trust, one of the world’s largest humanitarian demining organizations, based in Cambodia. It sounds unrelated to this site, and it is not. My work is injury prevention and hazard reduction: surveying land for the things that maim people, assessing who is at risk, clearing what can be cleared, and teaching communities to recognize the dangers they live alongside.
Fall prevention is the same discipline pointed at a different hazard. A loose rug and an unlit stairway are not landmines, but the reasoning is identical. Find the hazard. Judge the real risk rather than the frightening one. Remove what you can, mark what you cannot, and make sure the people living there understand the difference. That way of thinking runs through everything on this site.
You can verify my background on LinkedIn.
What I am not
I am not a physician, a nurse, an occupational therapist or a pharmacist. I do not diagnose anyone, and nothing on this site is medical advice for a specific person. What I can do is read the research carefully, report it accurately, and tell you plainly where the evidence is strong, where it is weak, and where it does not exist at all.
For decisions about a particular person, you need someone who can assess that person. Throughout the site I point toward the professionals who can: doctors, pharmacists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, and your local Area Agency on Aging.
Editorial standards
These are the rules I write to. I am publishing them because you deserve to know how the information you are reading was produced.
Evidence comes first, in order of quality. Where a Cochrane review or systematic review exists, I use it. Failing that, randomized trials. Then official guidelines from bodies such as the CDC, the USPSTF, the FDA and CMS. Then expert clinical consensus. Observational research is used where it is the best available, and clearly labeled as such.
Every statistic names its source. If I cannot trace a figure to a primary source, it does not go in the article. Widely repeated numbers get checked rather than assumed, and I have removed several that turned out not to appear in the papers they were attributed to.
I report uncertainty rather than hiding it. If a review rates the evidence as low quality, I say so. If a confidence interval crosses the point of no effect, I say the result was not significant. If nobody has run the trial that would settle a question, I say that too. Overstating a weak finding is the most common failure in health content, and it is the one I work hardest to avoid.
Every article says what the evidence does not support. This is the section other sites leave out, and it is often the most useful part. Knowing that a product cannot do what it claims is worth as much as knowing what does work.
Recommendations are never bought. Some articles contain affiliate links, and where they do it is disclosed on the page. A commission never changes an assessment. Several articles on this site actively advise readers not to buy things, including popular products that would earn a commission, because the evidence does not support them.
Articles are dated and revisited. Every article carries a last reviewed date. Guidance changes, prices change, and research moves, so pages are re-checked and updated rather than left to quietly go out of date.
Mistakes get corrected, visibly. If I get something wrong, I fix it and say what changed. If you spot an error, please get in touch, include the article and the source, and I will look into it.
Who I write for
Mostly the adult child. The person researching at night after a frightening phone call, who needs to know what to actually do next, not just what the literature says. I assume you are intelligent and that you are not a clinician, so I explain the jargon rather than avoiding the substance.
If you are the older adult reading this for yourself, everything here is written for you too. Most of it is about keeping your independence rather than restricting it, which is usually the point people miss.
Get in touch
Corrections, questions and suggestions for topics are all welcome through the contact form. I cannot give advice about an individual person’s health or care, and I will always point you toward a professional who can.