Geriatrics Fellowship News

Congratulations to Milta Oyola Little, DO, the newly installed President of the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, (AMDA-PALTC). 

Duke Department of Medicine and School of Medicine investigators successfully competed for a 5-year renewal of the highly prestigious National Institute on Aging P30, $6.5 million, Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center, based in the Duke Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development.

The Department of Medicine is pleased to announce the recipients of the first annual Neil L. Spector Art of Medicine Award, which recognizes exemplary mentorship practices in clinical and translational research.

Like many of us, Cathleen Colón-Emeric, MD, chief of the Division of Geriatrics, has older parents who live nearby. Here are some of her suggestions for navigating the new and urgent conversations and decisions facing many families, including her own.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded Duke University $1.4 million over four years to train physician-scientists to address Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRDs).  The Stimulating Access to Research in Residency (StARR) R38 was awarded to a team of Duke University School of Medicine faculty led by Anthony Viera, MD, MPH, chair and professor, Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, and Heather Whitson, MD, MHS, associate professor of medicine (Geriatrics) and ophthalmology and director of the Duke Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development.

Harvey Jay Cohen, MD, never planned to go into geriatrics. It wasn’t a word he heard in medical school in the 1960s. In fact, he hadn’t planned to go to medical school either. Once there, he certainly wasn’t planning to become a clinician--he just wanted to do research. Even after deciding to become a clinician-scientist, he chose hematology-oncology as his specialty. He never gave geriatrics a thought. But life has a way of presenting opportunities, and Dr. Cohen has a way of saying yes.

Kenneth Lyles, MD, professor of medicine (Geriatrics), was recently featured in Duke Magazine's "The Devil's Share" podcast in a story about his side specialty: pound cakes.

Cathleen Colon-Emeric MD, MHSc, professor of medicine (Geriatrics), has been appointed associate dean for research mentoring for the School of Medicine.

Kenneth Schmader, MD, professor of medicine and Chief, Division of Geriatrics, is the 2018 recipient of the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics William B. Abrams Award in Geriatric Clinical Pharmacology. 

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.