Division News

The Duke Perioperative Optimization of Senior Health, led by Mitchell Heflin, MD, associate professor of medicine (Geriatrics), and Sandhya Lagoo-Deenadayalan, MD, associate professor of surgery, published a study in JAMA Surgery on Jan. 3 that found with older patients, assessing risk and intervening before surgery leads to shorter hospital stays.

The Department of Medicine Chair’s Office and Minority Recruitment and Retention Committee, School of Medicine Office for Diversity and Inclusion, and School of Nursing are co-sponsoring a special event on Friday, January 12, 2018, to highlight health disparities research at Duke University. Kimberly Johnson, MD, associate professor of medicine (Geriatrics), will present "REACH Equity: Responding to the 'Fierce urgency of now.'"

After 12 years as chief of the Division of Geriatrics, Kenneth Schmader, MD, has elected to step down from this leadership role on June 30, 2018, Interim Chair Joseph Rogers, MD, announced this week.

It is no small matter that terminally ill African-Americans patients enroll in hospice less often than white patients. Lower participation contributes to health disparities between the races.

African-American patients are less likely than white patients to have their pain adequately diagnosed and treated, for one. They less often obtain medicine to treat pain and are less satisfied with communication and overall care from health providers.

When geriatrician Kimberly Johnson, MD, MHS, first observed these differences as a resident in the 1990s, she understood immediately that physicians needed to address them. So she did.

Kimberly Johnson, MD, associate professor of medicine (Geriatrics) and senior fellow in the Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development, has received one of 12 NIH awards to fund a specialized research center designed to conduct multidisciplinary research, research training and community engagement activities focused on improving minority health and reducing health disparities.

The Duke Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center has announced three opportunities for funding beginning July 1,  2018. Letters of interest are due Nov. 1, 2017.

Kimberly Johnson, MD, associate professor of medicine (Geriatrics), will receive funding from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to study the barriers and facilitators of advance-care planning for different racial groups.

Duke Perioperative Optimization of Senior Health, POSH, is a team-based approach in which surgeons, geriatricians, advanced practice providers from anesthesia, and patients work together to head off potential problems before surgery.

“Surgeons are seeing older and older patients,” says Shelley McDonald, DO, PhD, assistant professor of medicine (Geriatrics). “We’ve learned that by working together, these patients can get through surgery with fewer complications.”

Geriatrician Heather Whitson studies connections between multiple chronic conditions that many elderly people live with at once. Her research exploring links between vision loss and cognitive decline has altered practices in low-vision clinics. Her studies probing possible biological links between age-related disorders of eye and brain formerly considered unrelated, hold broad clinical promise.

Cahtleen Colon-Emeric, MD, associate professor of medicine (Geriatrics), and Senior Fellow in Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development, received a Duke Health Scholars Award this spring. This award is presented to faculty members who have an outstanding and established research path. Each award recipient receives substantial funding to further his or her research findings.