Since the 1970's, researchers and epidemiologists have documented that patient falls are a high-risk, high volume, high cost adverse events contributing to morbidity, mortality, decreased quality of life, and premature nursing home placement. Despite thousands of research studies published on patient falls, few studies have focused on the effectiveness of interventions , and fall rates and associated injuries among the elderly continue to rise. Impaired gait and balance (referred to as impaired stability) is one of the most significant causes and consequences of falls. Persons with peripheral neuropathy represent one of the largest patient populations with impaired stability. Lower limb peripheral neuropathy (LLPN) includes sensory and motor impairments that result in impaired gait and balance, jeopardizing safe mobility. Emerging evidence suggests that exercise programs can be effective in improving gait and balance in general fall risk populations, as well as reducing falls and fall-related injuries. Exercise interventions have been designed to reduce fall risk and promote successful aging. These interventions come in many forms, but the most common interventions are exercise training and Tai Chi, offered individually and in small group formats. Further research is needed to gain insight into the underlying mechanisms of different type of exercises and their impact on stability in veterans with LLPN. Research is needed to determine the type or combination of types of exercise to produce a more normal and/or stable gait in this high-risk patient population. Researchers are beginning to document that exercise interventions positively influence a person's fall self efficacy, i.e. self confidence for avoiding a fall, an important factor in understanding and examining a persons' behaviors related to fall risks. The emphasis on functionally based interventions has led to inappropriate broad groupings of older persons with mobility disorders. A weakness of previous studies was that they aggregated heterogeneous patient populations, resulting in neurological and musculoskeletal diagnostic heterogeneity and the confounding of results. Focusing on a homogeneous patient population is necessary to distinguish unique sensory, gait and balance deficits that contribute to impaired stability and mobility risk, as well as to better understand unique responses to treatment that are clouded when diverse patients are aggregated. We will target veterans with LLPN--one of the largest groups of patients referred to our Falls Clinic, and an understudied population with respect to safe patient mobility. This will allow us to design targeted interventions likely to be more effective than those tested on heterogeneous elderly populations, where visual and vestibular input to compensate for impaired proprioception were not taken into account.