Board Members

Orthop Surgeon Norway

Frede Frihagen is an orthopaedic trauma surgeon at Østfold Hospital Trust and Associate professor at the University of Oslo, Norway. He is the President of FFN and has been involved in FFN activities since the first Expert Meeting in Berlin in 2011. Frede is the founding President of the Fragility Fracture Network Norway. His main research interests are fracture treatment in old people, foremost hip fracture, and osteoporosis. He co-authored the Norwegian Guidelines for Secondary Fracture Prevention and the Guidelines for Interdisciplinary Hip Fracture Care. 

Nurse UK

Karen Hertz is a registered nurse, working in the UK NHS as an advanced nurse practitioner (ANP).

She has worked for 36 years in a variety of roles in Trauma and orthopaedics, however her passion is for fragility fracture nursing and inter-disciplinary care. She has been actively involved in both the Global and National Fragility Fracture.
She has co-authored a number of Journal articles, book chapters and books on Fragility fracture management and allied subjects. Including co-editing Fragility Fracture and Orthogeriatric Nursing: Fragility Fracture and Orthogeriatric Nursing Holistic Care and Management of the Fragility Fracture and Orthogeriatric Patient due to be published in autumn 2023.
She is actively involved with the professional development and education of nurses, including educational activities within FFN.

Physio Canada

Lauren Beaupre is a Professor of Physical Therapy and the Dr. David Magee Endowed Chair in Musculoskeletal Research at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.  Lauren has been engaged with the FFN for several years through the Scientific Committee and the Hip Fracture Recovery Research and Physiotherapy Special Interest Groups.  Her research interests are in recovery after hip fracture and access to rehabilitation following fragility fracture for those with cognitive impairment. Lauren also performs implementation science research and led a team that provided evidence to support Alberta’s adoption of secondary fracture prevention programs. 

Nurse UK

Julie is a registered nurse, now retired. She had a clinical career in orthopaedic and trauma nursing in the UK, moving to nursing education and research in 1995. Her areas of clinical/research expertise are fractures, wound management, pressure injury prevention, infection prevention, and professional ethics. Her PhD study focused on the diagnosis of infection. She has published widely across the fields of nursing and orthopaedic and trauma care. She has been a passionate FFN activist since its early days and has been involved in various projects relating to nursing and education. She has authored, co-authored and edited several books, and is co-editor of the Fragility Fracture Nursing book, alongside Karen Hertz. She has recently retired from her role as Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Orthopaedic and Trauma Nursing, having retired from full time paid employment at the University of Manchester, UK in 2018. She previously worked at the Univertisy of Hull and the University of Bradford. She is currently Adjunct Associate Professor of Orthopaedic Nursing at Odense University Hospitals/University of Southern Denmark. 

Orthop Surgeon HK-China

Geriatrician Chile

José Luis Dinamarca is Deputy Chair of the FFN´s Scientific Committee. Chilean geriatrician, PhD and MSc in Social Gerontology, graduated from the Latin American Academy of Medicine for the Older Adult (ALMA). Head of the Orthogeriatrics program at the Dr. Gustavo Fricke Hospital in Viña del Mar. Professor of Geriatrics and Orthogeriatrics at the University of Valparaíso. Researcher in Orthogeriatrics. Advisor to the Chilean Ministry of Health on issues of Orthogeriatrics. Creator and introducer of the concept of Dysmobility in Geriatrics. Chief Editor of BHVM, p2p-indexed scientific journal of the Lucas Sierra Foundation. Member of the Chilean Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology and the Chilean Society of Psychogeriatrics. Part of his time is dedicated to literature, being the author of the book of medical stories "Delantal de Médico" (The Physician's apron). 

Psychology Italy

Stefano Eleuteri, Health Psychologist, Psychotherapist. He is Chair of the Education Committee of the Fragility Fracture Network. Adjunct Lecturer at LUMSA University of Rome, he works as a freelance psychologist in Rome and Viterbo and at the Nursing Home Salus in Rome. He is the health professions representative for the Lazio Regional Section of the Italian Society of Gerontology and Geriatrics and member of the multiprofessional group against elderly maltreatment of the same Society. 

Orthop Surgeon Philippines

He is the current chair of the Global Fragility Fracture Network Regionalisation Committee and President of Fragility Fracture Network (FFN)- Philippines. He earned his medical degree from the University of the Philippines College of Medicine and subsequently trained at the University of the Philippines- Philippine General Hospital Department of Orthopedics. He underwent fellowship training in Hip and Knee Arthroplasty at the Brisbane Private Hospital and Queensland Bone Bank, and St. Vincent’s Clinic in Sydney, Australia. As well as further training in pelvis and acetabulum reconstruction surgery in Inselspital- Bern University Switzerland. Currently, he is the Chief of the University of the Philippines-Philippine General Hospital Orthopedic Trauma Division and the Head of the Philippine Orthopedic Association Osteoporosis and Orthogeriatric Working Group, and an Affiliate Research Associate Professor of the University of the Philippines National Institutes of Health-Institute of Aging. He is also a Council Member of the APOA Asia-Pacific Osteoporosis and Fragility Fracture Section, and a fellow of the Philippine Orthopedic Trauma Society, the Philippine Hip and Knee Society, and an AO Trauma Philippines Faculty. 

Geriatrician UK

Alasdair MacLullich is Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He is trained in medicine and psychology. Following a PhD in cognitive ageing he became Lecturer then MRC Clinician Scientist Fellow before taking up his present post. Alasdair works clinically (50%) in acute orthogeriatrics and acute geriatrics. His research interests include the clinical assessment and care of delirium, and the use of large scale routine data to understand delirium and hip fracture outcomes. He is the main author of the 4AT delirium detection tool (www.the4AT.com) used widely in routine care internationally including as part of several hip fracture registries. He also has developed neuropsychological research tools including the Observational Scale of Level of Arousal (OSLA). Alasdair is active in education, advocacy, and clinical implementation in delirium and hip fracture care. He is Chair of the Scottish Government Hip Fracture Audit. He co-founded the European Delirium Association, and co-chaired the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Group (SIGN) national delirium guidelines committee. Twitter: @a_maclullich.

Rehabilitation Physician South Korea

Prof Jae-Young Lim is a Professor of the Seoul National University College of Medicine and serving as the Board of Trustees of the Korean Association of Rehabilitation Medicine (KARM) and the Korean Geriatric Society (KGS). He is a Chief of Dept. of Rehabilitation Medicine, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, and a Director of Division of Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation. Currently, he is an Editor-in-Chief of “Annals of Geriatric Medicine and Research” and an Associate Editor of “PM & R”.  As a member of the Development Group for Sarcopenia and Low Back Pain in World Health Organizations’s (WHO), he has contributed to developing WHO Package of Interventions for Rehabilitation (PIR). He is also an active member of the Asian Working Group for Sarcopenia and of the Asian Working Group for Cachexia, and active board member of Fragility Fracture Network.   

As a specialist in musculoskeletal and geriatric rehabilitation, his primary research interest is to investigate the critical mechanisms of functional restoration and adaptation after injury, chronic diseases, or aging in humans. Prof. Lim has played an essential role in the Korean Longitudinal Study of Health and Aging (KLoSHA), which is a large government-funded study on aging. He has contributed seminal research findings on muscle quality to assess frailty and sarcopenia as well as conducted modality-specific intervention studies for the old population. He is also interested in developing integrated rehabilitation methods for fall prevention and fragility fracture care in older adults. Over the past several years, he worked on several research projects focused on the rehabilitation intervention and standard management for sarcopenia and fragility fractures of older adults as a principal investigator. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers in reputed international journals and written 15 book chapters.  

Rheumatologist UK

Dr Javaid is an honorary consultant adult rheumatologist and Associate Professor in metabolic bone disease at the University of Oxford. He specializes in common and rare metabolic bone diseases. He is the clinical lead for Oxford Fracture Prevention Service, and the national Fracture Liaison Service Audit for England and Wales and co-chairs the Capture the Fracture programme. He is the clinical lead for the Oxford Rare bone disease service for adults and the Musculoskeletal Genomic Clinical Interpretation partnership. His research interests include the epidemiology of musculoskeletal diseases with a focus on rare bone disorders, vitamin D and secondary fracture prevention.

Physiotherapist UK

Professor Katie Sheehan is based at Bone & Joint Health, Queen Mary University of London. She is a health services researcher and physiotherapist with experience from Ireland, Canada, and the UK. Her research focuses on improving access to- and delivery of- quality rehabilitation across the care continuum to optimise outcomes of fragility fractures in older adults. She has a strong track record in secondary analysis of linked audit data, qualitative interview studies, and complex intervention development to meet this focus. Professor Sheehan is the Chair-elect of the Scientific Committee of the Global Fragility Fracture Network, and Chair of the National Falls and Fragility Fracture Audit Programme Scientific and Publications Committee. She is a Fellow of both the UK Young Academy and the Young Academy of Europe where she advocates for clinical academics and early career researchers.

Physiotherapist Brazil

Mrs Perracini is an Associate Professor in the Master’s and Doctoral Programs in Physical Therapy at Universidade Cidade de São Paulo and a Research Fellow in the Master’s and Doctoral Programs in Gerontology at the Universidade de Campinas in São Paulo, Brazil. In the past twenty years, she has led many studies regarding frailty, falls and fractures, and balance and mobility problems in older people, including population-based cohort studies. She is the leader of a research network investigating trajectories of life-space mobility in older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic (Remobilize) and the co-leader in a network studying fall prevention and implementation strategies (PrevQuedas Brazil). In addition, she is a consultant for the Ageing and Health Unit at WHO on Long-term Care.  

She is a member of the Global Fragility Fracture Network (FFN) and one of the researchers participating in the World Fall Guidelines (working group for LMICs).  

Geriatrician Mexico

An Internist and Geriatrician from Mexico.

He is the current chair of the Regionalization committee for Latin America, and one of the deputy chairs of the Regionalization Committee. He graduated from the Anahuac University in Mexico City, and has the specialty in internal medicine, and geriatrics in Universidad de Guanajuato. He has a fellowship in orthogeriatrics in Madrid, Spain and is one of the mexican leaders in orthogeriatrics and secondary fracture prevention in México.

Orthogeriatrician UK

Antony Johansen was the first UK consultant to be appointed as a full time orthogeriatrician, and has worked in the trauma unit of the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff since 1997. 

He has championed the specialty of orthogeriatrics; co-authoring the British Orthopaedic Association’s ‘Blue Book’ on Fragility Fracture, and the NICE Guidelines on Hip Fracture. Since 2013 he has been clinical lead for the National Hip Fracture Database (NHFD) at the Royal College of Physicians, London. He is co-chair of the FFN Hip Fracture Audit SIG.  

As an honorary professor in Cardiff University his research interests embrace the whole field of geriatric medicine, with a focus on quality improvement for older trauma patients. 

Orthop surgeon Spain

Geriatrician Canada

Dr. Jenny Thain is an Assistant Professor within the Division of Geriatric Medicine, Western University.  Her areas of clinical interest include osteoporosis and bone health, with a particular interest in orthogeriatric care.  She is the chair of the Canadian Geriatrics Society Osteoporosis and Bone Health Special Interest Group, a member of the FFN Scientific Committee and Osteoporosis Canada Scientific Advisory Council and the Geriatric clinical lead of the Hip Fracture Unit at Victoria Hospital.   

Orthop surgeon USA

Orthop surgeon Switzerland

Prof. Dr. med. Johannes Bastian is a Bern-trained teaching surgeon, and is a member of the Swiss Medical Association (FMH) for orthopaedic surgery and musculoskeletal traumatology. He lives with his family in Bern and is a Swiss citizen. He is based at the Inselspital, University Hospital Bern, where he specializes in hip and pelvic surgery with a focus on primary and revision prosthetics, and traumatology in the treatment and revision of fractures of the femur and acetabulum, including periprosthetic fractures and pelvic ring injuries. His most important teachers and mentors are Prof. R. Ganz, Prof. K. Siebenrock, Prof. M. Keel and Prof. P. Giannoudis (Leeds, UK).

In his fields of expertise, he is involved in teaching and research. He is the author of scientific publications (PubMed) and book contributions, speaks at national and international conferences, writes reviews for various journals, and is an active member of renowned professional societies.

At the Inselspital he and his team have established an orthogeriatric service and a fracture liaison service, both of which he leads. At his request, the «Orthogeriatric and geriatric traumatology» expert group was set up within the Swiss Society for Orthopaedic Surgery and Traumatology (Swiss Orthopaedics), of which he is the president. He founded the Orthogeriatric Research Center Bern as a platform for interdisciplinary and interprofessional exchange within the framework of the Swiss Orthogeriatric Day. He is passionate about providing the elderly with optimal orthopaedic trauma care in acute care hospitals.

Geriatrician Japan

Endocrinologist Argentina

María is an endocrinologist with Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires where she provides care to patients with bone diseases both in the inpatient and outpatient settings, leads the Fracture Liaison Service and participates in the Hip Fracture Institutional Audit. She is a professor in the Osteology Career at the Instituto Universitario del Hospital Italiano and the Asociación Argentina de Osteología y Metabolismo Mineral (AAOMM) among other teaching activities.

She is part of AAOMM's Fracture Prevention and Rare Bone Diseases study groups.

María coordinates the Argentinian Hip Fracture Network (RAFCA) and contributes to the development of the Argentinian Hip Fracture Audit. "Programa Pasos".

She is part of FFN's Regionalization Committee for Latin America and of the Secondary Prevention and Hip Fracture Audit advisory groups.

She actively works to set up networks in order to promote registries and multidisciplinary models for fracture care and prevention, aiming at improving patient outcomes and resource utilization.

Dietitian, Iceland

Professor of nutrition at the University of Iceland's Faculty of Food and Nutrition.

My research interests are the nutritional status of older adults and how nutrition can affect age-related loss of function. To gain insight into how dietary choices and nutritional status can impact the well-being and abilities of older individuals, particularly after hospitalization.

In addition, I have been part of the working group to publish the Icelandic recommendations for food and nutrition for older age groups Service (https://island.is/naering-radleggingar-landlaeknis/naering-eldra-folk ) and was part of the new Nordic recommendations for protein intake (https://www.norden.org/en/publication/nordic-nutrition-recommendations-2023 ).

Ólöf Guðný Geirsdóttir — (rais.is)

Orthop surgeon, HK-China

Nurse, Philippines

Orthop surgeon Sweden

Kristina Åkesson MD, PhD, Professor of Orthopedics and senior consultant at the Department of
Orthopedics at Skåne University Hospital Malmö and the Faculty of Medicine, Lund University,
Sweden. She is currently Dean at the Faculty of Medicine and has previously held a number of faculty
appointments.
Her research uses a translational approach to identify risk factors for osteoporosis and fracture
including genetics, bone markers and epidemiology. This has been accomplished through several
large cohorts and the advantage of working within orthopaedics. Research is closely linked to
improving patient care as chief of the Centre for Osteoporosis and Fracture Prevention. Her research
is supported by grants from the National Research Councils as well as a number of foundations. She is
a member of the IOF committee of scientific advisors, co-chairing the Fracture working-group and the
Capture the Fracture campaign. She is also member of the ASBMR Bone Marker working-group and
former member of the Ethics committee; the board of ACTA Orthopedica, the editorial boards of
BMC Geriatrics; Osteoporosis International; reviewer for national research councils, other funding
bodies, international congresses and journals. Publications include over two hundred original papers,
reviews, book chapters, in addition to guidelines and popular science contributions.

Orthop surgeon USA

Orthop surgeon Japan

See bio here

Orthop surgeon Canada

See bio here

Orthop surgeon Turkey

Nurse Portugal

Carmen Queirós, a specialist in rehabilitation nursing at an orthotraumatology ward of a primary hospital in Porto, Portugal, is an invited associate teacher at Escola Superior de Enfermagem do Tâmega e Sousa - CESPU. She serves as the president of the Association of Portuguese Orthopaedics and Traumatology Nurses and as the general secretary of FFN – Portugal. Currently, she is enrolled as a doctoral student in the field of nursing sciences at the University of Porto.  She earned her master's degree in nursing in 2013 and has been certified since 2016 as an expert in higher education. Her principal area of interest lies in nursing science, with a particular focus on rehabilitation, orthopaedics, fragility fractures, nursing informatics, the utilisation of technology in nursing, and evidence-based practice. She has coordinated events, authored articles and contributed to book chapters in her areas of interest.

Orthop surgeon USA

Orthop surgeon UK

David Marsh is a retired professor of orthopaedic surgery, now living in Umbria, Italy. He was active in the field of fragility fractures in the UK, driving the establishment of the National Hip Fracture Database as the first co-chair of its steering group; the British Orthopaedic Association and the UK Orthopaedic Trauma Society awarded him Honorary Fellowships for this work. Internationally, he chaired the Osteoporotic Fracture Campaign of the International Society for Fracture Repair since 2002 and was then the founding president of the Fragility Fracture Network in 2011. Multidisciplinary care has always been his theme, particularly the collaboration between orthopaedics and geriatric medicine, tackling both fragility and frailty in the older fracture patient.

Researcher USA

 Jay Magaziner, PhD, MSHyg  is professor and chair, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health in the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Director of the University’s Center for Research on Aging. He served as president of the Fragility Fracture Network from 2019 – 2021 and has remained active in organizational leadership roles.  He has been studying hip fracture outcomes for more than 40 years. His research has been directed at identifying the consequences of hip fracture and on developing and evaluating the effects of interventions to improve outcomes He collaborates with other internationally recognized researchers and clinical experts on methods to collectively advance hip fracture care for older persons. He is Principal Investigator of the UM-Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center, a federally funded center for study of function in older persons and has been funded continuously by the National Institute on Aging (NIIA) since 1983. His work on hip fracture recovery has earned me two consecutive MERIT Awards from the NIA. 

Geriatrician Malaysia

Dr Khor Hui Min is a consultant geriatrician and senior lecturer in University of Malaya, Malaysia. She received her medical degree from University of Newcastle Upon Tyne in 2005 and became a member of the Royal College of Physicians (MRCP) since 2009.  

Dr Khor has special interests in orthogeriatric care, dementia and frailty in the older person. She is currently the Vice President of the Fragility Fracture Network of Malaysia (FFNM). She has presented many of her research findings both locally and abroad as part of the Ageing and Age-Associated Disorders Research Group.  

Geriatrician Italy

Dr. Ruggiero is professor of Geriatrics-Internal Medicine at University of Perugia, Italy. She is founder and head of the Orthogeriatric Unit of the Academic Hospital in Perugia, formally established in 2016, and of the Falls and Fracture Prevention Service, accredited as Post-Fracture Care Service by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development and by the International Osteoporosis Foundation, since 2017. She has been studying frailty, inflammation as underlying mechanism of age-related diseases, focusing on osteoporosis, bone-muscle interaction, fragility fractures and orthogeriatric acute and post-fracture care models. She developed and conducted regional educational programs in Orthogeriatrics for HC professionals and established Orthogeriatric curricula for Nursing Master Degree. Recipient of many National and International research grants. She is listed among top Italian scientists (150 publications in peer-review journal, 4200 citations and H-index 36). Dr Ruggiero is founder member and President of FFN Italy.

Geriatrician Netherlands

Nathalie van der Velde is a consultant and full professor at the Geriatrics Department of the Amsterdam UMC, The Netherlands. She serves as principal investigator and leader of the research line ‘person-centered falls & fracture prevention’. Since 2022 she is a member of the Academic Board of the European Geriatric Medicine Society (EuGMS).

With regard to editorial tasks she has started as an Associate Editor for Age & Ageing in 2019 and has been appointed Deputy Editor-in-Chief in 2022. Furthermore, she is an Associate Editor of the Annals of Medicine.

Nathalie is both nationally and internationally involved in activities to improve falls and fracture prevention. She chairs the EuGMS SIG Falls and Fractures and its Task and Finish Group on fall-risk-increasing drugs and starting this year she will represent the EuGMS at the board of the Fragility Fracture Network. She is also a co-chair of the steering group of the World Falls Guideline initiative, and co-lead its polypharmacy working group. Furthermore, She is a member of the organizing committee of the World Congress on Falls and Postural Stability.

On a national level, she is co-founder and chair of the board of the annual Dutch Falls Symposium. Besides, she chairs the Dutch SIG on Falls prevention and she is a member of the board of the Dutch Syncope and Autonomic Disorders group and of the steering committee of the Dutch Falls and Dizziness Guidelines cluster. She has (co-)authored various book chapters on falls prevention, syncope/TLOC and pharmacology/deprescribing and has published over 180 peer-reviewed articles.

She has received several awards: ‘top-cited article’ of JAMDA (2018); selection for several leadership programs (AMC: 2016; Dutch Geriatrics Society: 2015; Erasmus MC: 2009); best PhD Thesis in Geriatric Medicine (NVKG, 2007-2008); the British Journal Clinical Pharmacology prize best articles (2007); as well as several poster and presentation prizes.

Scientific publications: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6477-6209