CELEBRATING THIRTY YEARS OF AGING
AND HEALTH 2012 ANNUAL REPORT
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FACULTY DEVELOPMENT

1983

Centers of Excellence for Training Academic Geriatricians

1997-present The Academic Geriatrics Recruitment Initiative (AGRI) was redefined as the Centers of Excellence in Geriatric Medicine program. These Centers, through their investment in advanced fellows and junior faculty, have produced hundreds of academic geriatricians. These knowledgeable scientists, teachers, and clinicians have raised the profile of geriatrics within their schools of medicine and throughout the nation.

Two Centers of Excellence in Geriatric Psychiatry were established in 2005. With the final three Centers established in 2008, today there are 28 Centers of Excellence across the country.

The Centers of Excellence have increased the prominence of geriatrics institutionally and nationally. Sixty-eight percent of all geriatrics fellows and 71 percent of all advanced fellows in the United States were trained at Hartford Centers of Excellence. Eighty-two percent of faculty supported by a Center of Excellence remain in academic geriatrics.

In 2009, the Centers of Excellence program was redesigned with a national program office at the American Federation for Aging Research, with an even stronger emphasis on supporting and connecting junior faculty and fellows selectedas scholars.

(Top) Rainier Soriano, MD, with second year medical students, at Mount Sinai Medical Center, NY.

(Below) Jerry Johnson, MD, examining a patient at the Hartford Center of Excellence, University of Pennsylvania.
1994 The resources from the Center of Excellence have helped us to encourage people to choose aging instead of another discipline at a critical time in their career.” Mary E. Tinetti, MD
Director
Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center
School of Medicine
Yale University
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the field of geriatrics probably would not exist were it not for the Hartford Foundation. A critical mass of leaders, researchers, and teachers in geriatrics exist today because of the Hartford Foundation. With funding from the Foundation, they had a way to support themselves, to do their work, and sustain a professional identity during a time—even up to the present—when geriatrics was marginalized, stigmatized, and not considered important to the health care system.” Diane E. Meier, MD
Director
Center to Advance Palliative Care
Professor
Geriatrics and Internal Medicine
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center
1997 (Above) Pearl H. Seo, MD, MPH, received Hartford junior faculty support for her research on outcomes among older cancer patients.

(Below, right) Margaret Pisani, MD, received support through the Hartford Center of Excellence at Yale University School of Medicine to conduct research on improving functional outcomes for older patients treated in the intensive care unit.
1997 CoE’s: Building Geriatric Education and Research (Below) John R. Burton, MD, Director, Johns Hopkins Geriatric Education Center, providing guidance to primary care residents in the care of elder frail patients. The University of Washington Center of Excellence was a very tangible force for me because they purchased my first microscope, a high-resolution photomicroscope, which I still have in my office today. Where the Center of Excellence is so helpful is with the missing pieces—like equipment or gaps in funding—that are so problematic for young investigators. If you show promise and a commitment to academics, the Center is really there for you. It was there for me.” May J. Reed, MD
Associate Professor
Division of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine
University of Washington School of Medicine


(Below) Hartford Centers of Excellence in Geriatric Psychiatry 2011 videos.





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