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Grants and Awards

This past year, the Center for Aging Health received a $5 endowment from the UNC Health Foundation in support of the McNeil Family Program for Long-term Care. The Program under the leadership of Jan Busby-Whitehead, MD will build on and sustain our shared efforts to expand the geriatric workforce.

Carolina Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Program logo

Dr. Jan Busby-Whitehead and The Center for Aging and Health received a five-year grant for five million dollars from HRSA (the Health Resources and Services Administration). With this grant, the Center for Aging and Health at UNC seeks to integrate geriatrics into primary care and expand interprofessional education in geriatrics via the Carolina Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Program (CGWEP).

CGWEP Expands Geriatric Education

The CGWEP will also continue expanding geriatric education to the primary care workforce through residency training, Interprofessional team education, and expanded IHI Age Friendly Healthcare system work amongst other educational enhancements. This program will allow the Center for Aging and Health to continue to provide training to first year Internal Medicine and Family Medicine residents in the AGES program (Advanced Geriatric Evaluation and Skills).

The program was originally developed by Dr. Gregg Warshaw and now includes a number of Geriatric Medicine fellows and faculty as teachers. In addition, several faculty were engaged in writing book chapters for the next edition of Ham’s Principles of Geriatrics.

Japanese-American Collaboration in Geriatrics

Drs. Batsis, Busby-Whitehead, Umegaki and Hanson met in spring 2024 to discuss collaboration with Nagoya University’s Department of Community Health and Geriatrics.
Drs. Batsis, Busby-Whitehead, Umegaki and Hanson met in spring 2024 to discuss collaboration with Nagoya University’s Department of Community Health and Geriatrics.

In February 2024, Nagoya University in Japan invited Associate Professor of Geriatric Medicine Dr. John Batsis to visit their institution. While there, the aging specialist gave lectures, toured facilities, met with researchers, and visited classrooms.

A couple of weeks after Dr. Batsis’ visit to Japan, Nagoya University’s professor Hiroyuki Umegaki (Department of Community Health and Geriatrics) reciprocated, visited the UNC Division of Geriatric Medicine.

Currently, researchers at both institutions are pursuing ways to collaborate and advance opportunities for aging research. Following the success of the previous exchange, the two institutions will host a second exchange program later this year.

Batsis Presented at NIA’s Research Centers Collaborative Network Workshop

Dr. John Batsis presented at the National Institute on Aging’s Research Centers Collaborative Network (RCCN) Workshop on Nutrition and Aging Biology in San Francisco. He spoke on GLP-1 Receptor Agonists’ Effect in Older Adults at the June gathering. Also, Dr. Batsis’ UNC colleague Danae Gross gave presentation at the conference. Her talk was entitled Diet, Sarcopenia, and Obesity.

UNC Geriatric Clinic Top 10 Rating

The Geriatric Medicine Eastowne Clinic scored in the top 10 of all outpatient clinics for our patient satisfaction in September and October 2024.

Key 2024 Hires

Key faculty hires in 2024 were Dr. Hillary Spangler in Clinical Research and Dr. Rachel Eliach in Clinical Geriatrics and Palliative Care. In addition, Kayla Wilkerson, NP was hired to join the Geriatric Medicine Division in August 2024.

Faculty Achievements

Meredith Gilliam, MD, MPH

Dr. GilliamMeredith Gilliam, MD, MPH was selected as a Tideswell ELIA Scholar for 2024-2025. In June, she also became the site PI for a PCORI-funded multisite implementation project of shared decision-making around stopping colon cancer screening.

Laura C. Hanson, MD, MPH

Laura C. Hanson, MD, MPHDr. Hanson, Medical Director for the UNC Palliative Care & Hospice Program, led UNC’s participation as one of the top-enrolling sites in a multi-site clinical trial testing telehealth to expand Palliative Care access for patients with advanced cancer.

The study, entitled Telehealth vs In-Person Early Palliative Care for Patients with Advanced Lung Cancer, was funded by a PCORI grant to Dr. Jennifer Temel at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and conducted at 22 major US cancer centers. Palliative Care specialists are concentrated in major medical centers, and results support Palliative Care telehealth as a feasible, acceptable alternative to in-person visits, with equivalent benefits for quality of life.

In addition, Dr. Hanson will join the lead investigators in a plenary presentation of findings at the Annual Assembly of the American Academy of Hospice & Palliative Medicine in February 2025. Details are available in the study publication in JAMA.

Anna Kahkoska, MD, PhD

Anna Kahkoska, MD, PhDDr. Kahkoska Received a K Award: “Building a Real-World Evidence Base for Continuous Glucose Monitoring in Older Adults with Diabetes” (2024-2027).

Joshua Niznik, PharmD, PhD

Joshua Niznik, PharmD, PhDDr. Niznik led the development of a report that describes the major lessons learned from a series of discussions between people living with dementia, care partners, researchers, healthcare providers, and other community members about ways to improve the quality of healthcare for people living with dementia.

Also, Dr. Niznik was first author of a paper examining concordance of dementia indicators across Medicare datasets: Published in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society in August 2024, the paper is entitled A comparison of dementia diagnoses and cognitive function measures in Medicare claims and the Minimum Data Set.

Additionally, Dr. Niznik was appointed as Faculty Mentor to the NC TraCS Department of Medicine K Writing Group.