Cameron Gettel, MD, MHS, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine recently received two awards to further develop his research portfolio at the intersection of geriatrics and emergency care. The awards include the National institutes of Health/National Institute on Aging’s Grants for Early Medical and Surgical Subspecialists’ Transition to Aging Research (GEMSSTAR) as well as a Career Development Award from the NIA Imbedded Pragmatic Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and AD-Related Dementias (AD/ADRD) Clinical Trials (IMPACT) Collaboratory.
Gettel’s projects aim to develop novel patient- and caregiver-reported outcome measures for older adults and their caregivers (for persons living with dementia) as they experience emergency department care transitions. At Yale, Gettel will work with Ula Hwang, Arjun Venkatesh, Shelli Feder, and Marney White, and use the foundation of mixed methods research techniques he learned in the Yale National Clinician Scholars Program.
Gettel became interested in research at the intersection of geriatrics and emergency care as a resident physician. There, he cared for many older adults from long-term care facilities that had suboptimal care transitions to the ED, often with key information missing and potential limited ability of the older adult to provide relevant information themselves. Gettel states, ““Currently many of the outcomes assessed for older adults as they leave the ED hinge upon repeat ED visits or hospitalizations over a certain timeframe, yet very little work thus far takes into account patient- and caregiver-centered outcomes that we as healthcare professionals should be striving to improve.”
During a particularly vulnerable time in a new faculty’s career, the overall goal of the NIA’s GEMSSTAR program is to provide support for early career physician-scientists to launch careers as future leaders in aging- or geriatric-focused research. Additionally, the overall mission of the NIA IMPACT Collaboratory is to build the nation’s capacity to conduct pragmatic clinical trials of interventions embedded within healthcare systems for people living with dementia and their care partners.