I've always been of the impression that more injuries are sustained while ascending stairs than descending them. When descending, the majority of persons place the whole foot down onto the stair tread (even if rushing), but while ascending, in the main, only the front half or less of the foot makes contact with the edge of the tread and if slips off (quite common!!) next point of contact is the shin against the stair tread nosing. Ouch.

Basic awareness raising of body positions and "what if" scenarios.

Interesting, a few years ago I was in the same position, had a few accidents on a stair well and whilst investigating I out it down to multiple causes i.e. shoes, wet, carrying items and lack of attention etc. What happened next was I too stumbled on the stairs and I knew that non of the above issues applied (after all I am cautious and otherwise perfect). So I took more time to look and checked the lighting, and friction on the steps but to my surprise when I looked at the steps in detail I found that 3 of the risers had different heights, the result being that 3 of the steps where out by between 10 -40mm!
It seems that we all climb stairs by looking at the step 4-5 above where you place your feet and our brain calculates the step based on this. Its worth going back to the steps and running a line down them to see if they are all the same size!
My apologies if you have already done this.

L

Lwood has mentioned something that is extremely important, the even-ness of the stairs.

I had a conducted visit around a very old courthouse once, and we were cautioned to be very careful going up and down the staircase. Each riser was slightly different, and this had been designed deliberately, hundreds of years ago, to stop criminals from escaping from Court. The aim was to make them fall down the stairs. I imagine it was a fairly successful control measure.

Why are we teaching people to walk up and down stairs? Is this not just another example of health and safety gone mad?

I always understood that H&S was about work related tasks, surely walking up and down stairs is an everyday task.

Next we'll be risk assessing making tea, climbing trees and playing conkers.

Is it any wonder we continue to be ridiculed in the media.

Several responses contain sound ergonomic proposals yet your own observation is vital: 'the flipside the negative perception - do we have to be told how to ascend and descend stairs now?'

Recurrent dead-end exchanges between IOSH officers and Director with media illustrate the pitfalls you refer to.

A way of avoiding these pitfalls is to survey staff about communicating occupatinal health and safety messages. I'm sometimes amazed at how safety professionals crover notice boards with screeds of jargon and no good images ('Smiley' stereotypes are a caricature of safety and health) and then wonder about the 'impact' of their messages. The non-response and failure of managers as well as other staff to recall any messages is itself a rational response to boring, tedious bureaucratese.

Without details of your organisational context, it's impossible to be specific about how you design such a survey. Yet Q methodology and repertory grids offer a very powerful method of gaining insights you can use for a communications campaign for 3+ years.

Not trying to be funny but haven't you answered your own question here?