UNC Geriatric Medicine Fellowship Program

Our mission is to build the clinical knowledge, skills, and acumen needed to care for older adults and to produce future leaders in geriatric clinical care and medical education.

The UNC Fellowship in Geriatric Medicine has been training fellows in the care of older adults since 1988. Our fellows have pursued careers in academics, research, and clinical practice in a variety of settings, and many have gone on to combine their geriatrics training with additional subspecialty training, such as Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Palliative Care, Cardiology, and Oncology.

We take pride in being able to tailor our Geriatric Fellowship Program to the personal career goals of each Fellow. Our goal is to nurture the professional growth of each of our Fellows and share our love of Geriatrics.

2021-2022 Geriatric Medicine Fellowship

As Covid continues to limit physical engagement, we regret that our interactions with potential future Geriatric Medicine Fellows will be through digital channels. Though we’ll miss seeing you in person, we look forward to meeting you on Zoom!

Our Fellows have:

• gone on to academic positions in many institutions
• become clinical leaders in hospital, skilled nursing facility and clinic settings
• combined their geriatrics fellowship with other subspecialties, gaining a special niche within that subspecialty

Faculty members in the Division of Geriatric Medicine are experts in medical education and program development, experienced researchers and quality improvement leaders, and also clinical role models in multiple settings. Our Fellowship is highly integrated with Hospice and Palliative Care at UNC, including its Fellowship Program. Our 2020 Fellowship year also includes two Geriatric Emergency Medicine Fellows who will split their time between Geriatric Medicine and Emergency Medicine. We have affiliations with UNC’s exceptional professional schools, including Public Health, Nursing, PA, Pharmacy, Physical and Occupational Therapy, and Social Work.

This year, we are excited for our Fellows to start the fifth year of our continuing Quality Improvement project and curriculum. Through this project Fellows have been published in the Journal of American Geriatrics (JAGS) and have presented in the Presidential Poster Session at the American Geriatrics Society National Meeting (2017 through 2019).

We would be excited for you to join our program. Please contact us with any questions or requests for additional information.

Geriatric Medicine News: Fall 2020

Congratulations to Lindsay Wilson, MD, MPH, Associate Professor, Division of Geriatric Medicine, on her selection as Co-director of the Individualization Phase of the School of Medicine curriculum. Currently serving as President of the Academy of Educators, Dr. Wilson has consistently been recognized for excellence in teaching and scholarship and has taught in every phase of the curriculum. She leads the Transitions Course and Acting Internship Selectives and directs the Care of the Older Patient Scholarly Concentration.

The Center for Aging and Health’s HRSA-funded Carolina Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Program (CGWEP) launched their ECHO training series in October on Diabetes Management. Led by Dr. Marvin McBride, the bi-weekly lunchtime series has seen strong attendance and positive feedback from clinicians at Piedmont Health Service. The CGWEP extends huge thanks to faculty from the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism for participating in this series and helping to ensure ongoing excellence in the quality of case discussion.

Joshua Niznik, PharmD, PhD is an invited speaker for the Health Sciences Presidential Symposium at the Gerontological Society of America’s Annual Scientific Meeting. The presidential symposium on “The Past, Present and Future of Health Sciences Research” will showcase junior and senior researchers’ perspective on how their science began, ways their research has built on the past, and views about the continuing trajectory of their scientific work.

Dr. Niznik’s presentation entitled “Deprescribing in older adults: Is evidence for continued medication use generalizable beyond age 75?” will discuss the evolution of deprescribing research as a means to reconcile medication use with goals of care as adults age.  The symposium will be available on-demand throughout the conference with a live presenter session on Wednesday, November 4, 2020 1:45 PM – 2:15 PM.

Lindsay Wilson, MD, MPH, Ellen Roberts, PhD, MPH, Joshua Niznik, PharmD, PhD, Marvin McBride, MD, MBA, Maureen Dale, MD, John Gotelli, RN, Cris Henage, PhD, Ellen Schneider, MBA, Casey Kelley, MPH, and Carol Julian will represent the Division of Geriatric Medicine at the Gerontological Society Association’s upcoming 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting Online. Research presented includes dementia friendly hospital initiative outcomes, deprescribing opioids and benzodiazepines in adults 65+ to reduce falls risk (with Stefanie Ferreri, PharmD, in the School of Pharmacy); a virtual curriculum to improve medical student comfort with geriatric care and telemedicine; and deprescribing in older adults: is evidence for continued medication use generalizable beyond age 75?

John Gotelli, MSN, NP, in the Division of Geriatric Medicine, co-authored “Managing Insomnia in Older Adults” in September’s Nursing 2020, with Christine Hedges, PhD, NP.

Congratulations to our UNC Geriatrics clinic, a 2020 Carolina Care Excellence Award recipient for patient care. UNC Geriatrics is the only UNC Health primary care clinic to be recognized with this award. Under the medical directorship of the Division of Geriatric Medicine’s Steve Kizer, MD, UNC Geriatrics clinic has been a Carolina Care Excellence Award recipient for the past 5 years. Also, under the medical directorship of the Division of Geriatric Medicine’s Margaret Drickamer, MD, SECU Jim and Betsy Bryan Hospice Home won a Carolina Care “Behavioral Award” for Outpatient Care. Congratulations, UNC Hospice tea

Rosanne Tiller, MD, will speak on “The Geriatric Syndrome of Frailty” at Moses Cone Grand Rounds on October 9.

UNC Center for Aging and Health will be funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to continue as a National Training Center for the MSTAR program: Medical Students Training in Aging Research. Through a $526,825 T-35 grant (“UNC-CH Summer Research Training in Aging for Medical Students – MSTAR” / T35-AG038047) UNC’s MSTAR program has trained 111 medical students in aging research since 2010. This year’s award represents the third round of funding for UNC’s MSTAR program. Division of Geriatric Medicine Chief Jan Busby-Whitehead, MD, is the Principal Investigator and Program Director.

The Center for Aging and Health is a sub-recipient of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) “Building Our Largest Dementia Infrastructure for North Carolinians” (BOLD NC) funding, partnering with the NC Division of Aging and Adult Services (grant PI) and NC Division of Public Health to bring a public health, coordinated, systematic approach to our state’s brain health efforts.

We’re delighted to announce several new Faculty in the Division of Geriatric Medicine.

John A. Batsis, MD, Associate Professor, Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gilling School of Public Health, joins us from Dartmouth Medical School where he was a staff physician at the  at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and ran an active research program focused on older adults, technology, and functional capacity.

Rosanne Tiller, MD, joins our Faculty after completing residency and a Geriatric Medicine Fellowship at UNC. Tiller was Chief Inpatient Resident in 2017-2018.

Junève Toche, MD, joins our Faculty after completing residency and a Geriatric Medicine Fellowship at UNC. Toche was Chief Outpatient Resident in 2018-2019.

We could not be more fortunate to have these outstanding Geriatrician-Clinician-Educator-Researchers on board!

Laura Hanson, MD, MPH, Professor of Geriatric Medicine and Medical Director of Palliative Care, has been awarded $4.1 million in funding to administer a new multicenter trial from the National Institute on Aging (NIA). This award funds the first major clinical trial of comprehensive dementia-specific palliative care.

The ADRD Palliative Care (ADRD-PC) trial will enroll hospitalized patients with late-stage Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) and their family caregivers, and follow them after discharge to improve supportive care in the community. Trial sites include the University of North Carolina, University of Colorado, Indiana University and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Please see more Faculty news here.