Section of Geriatrics Recognizes Women

Brilliant, energetic, and internationally recognized women have had enormous impact on the success of the Section of Geriatrics at Yale.

One of these exemplary women, Mary Tinetti, was recruited to Yale in 1984 and has had a remarkable career since. She became the first director of the Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center at Yale in 1992, and was promoted to professor of medicine in 1996, becoming chief of the Section of Geriatrics in 2012. Two of Dr. Tinetti’s many accolades include being elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2007, and being awarded the five-year MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (“genius award”) for her work on fall prevention in 2009.

Denise Acampora - During the past 30 years, Ms. Acampora has worked closely with leadership on the expansion of the Yale Section of Geriatrics as assistant chief for research and educational programs, managing the fellowship programs, faculty affairs, and collaborations with other departments and universities. During this time, she has directed and collaborated on several landmark epidemiologic studies and clinical trials focusing on multifactorial geriatric conditions such as delirium, falls, and functional decline in elderly hospitalized patients.

An exemplary member of the Geriatrics research faculty, Heather Allore, was recruited to Yale in 2000 as an associate research scientist. She went on to become the director of the world-renowned Biostatistical Core for the Program on Aging. Dr. Allore was promoted to professor of medicine in the Section of Geriatrics in 2016.

Dorothy Baker – Dr. Baker has had a long and distinguished career at the Yale University School of Nursing, Yale Department of Epidemiology and Pubic Health, and since 2004 in the Section of Geriatrics. She has been one of the world leaders in the prevention of falls. As a leader of the Connecticut Collaboration for Fall Prevention, she has worked tirelessly with health care institutions and clinicians throughout the state to prevent falls. She has made outstanding contributions to the field of geriatric medicine.

Lisa Barry – After receiving her MPH and PhD at Yale, Dr. Barry was the first PhD recruited to the T32 Training Program in Geriatric Clinical Epidemiology and Aging Related Research. She joined our faculty in 2007 as an assistant professor until she was recruited by UCONN in 2011. Dr. Barry’s research focuses on the interface between mental health and physical function in older persons, with an emphasis on the epidemiology of depression and depression treatment.

Darce Costello – Dr. Costello joined the faculty of the Section of Geriatrics in 2016 as a biostatistician assisting faculty members in the investigation of multi-factorial geriatric conditions with multiple contributing factors and outcomes. She has used innovative analytic methods to study heterogeneity and disparities in development throughout the life span.

Margaret Drickamer was recruited to Yale in 1986 as an assistant professor of medicine. She directed the program in geriatrics at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System and was associate chief of staff at that institution from 1988 to 2000. She was clinical director of the fellowship in geriatrics from 1992 to 2006 and became director in 2006. Dr. Drickamer was deputy section chief for education in the Section of Geriatrics in 2001, and was promoted to professor of medicine in 2009. She left Yale to take a position at the University of North Carolina in 2013.

Another outstanding and renowned faculty member, Terri Fried was recruited to Yale in 1995. She has subsequently become one of the country’s experts on understanding the treatment preferences of seriously ill patients. Dr. Fried was promoted to professor of medicine in 2008 and became chief of the Section of Geriatrics at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System in 2012.

Alexandra Hajduk – After completing her fellowship training in the T32 Training Program in Geriatric Clinical Epidemiology, Dr. Hajduk will be joining our faculty July 1, 2018. Her research examines geriatric conditions in older adults with cardiovascular disease. She explored the associations of low mobility, cognitive impairment, and multiple chronic conditions on clinical and functional outcomes among older adults with myocardial infarction, heart failure, and atrial fibrillation.

Sharon Inouye, recruited to Yale in 1986 following a period as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar, has had an outstanding career in clinical research. She developed the Confusion Assessment Method for diagnosis of delirium and carried out a successful intervention to decrease the incidence of delirium at an acute care hospital. She has since become one of the world’s experts on delirium. After being appointed as a full professor at Yale in 2002, Dr. Inouye was recruited to Harvard in 2005 as the Milton and Shirley F. Levy Family Chair of Alzheimer’s Disease. Dr. Inouye was elected to membership in the National Academy of Medicine in 2011.

Grace Jenq was recruited as an assistant professor in the section of geriatric medicine in 2004. She was appointed medical director of the inpatient medical services of Yale New Haven Hospital in 2005 and associate chair for patient safety and quality for the Department of Medicine in 2012. She became director of post-acute care services for the Yale New Haven Health System in 2015. In 2016 she moved to a position at the University of Michigan Medical Center, where her husband had been appointed to an endowed Chair in cardiology.

Jennifer Kapo - One of our newer faculty members, Dr. Kapo, was recruited to Yale in 2012 as chief of palliative care of Yale New Haven Hospital. She was appointed as an associate professor in the Section of Geriatric Medicine in 2012. In addition, she focuses on developing a research mission in palliative medicine and expanding teaching opportunities for existing Yale faculty, staff, fellows, residents, and medical students.

Chandrika Kumar – Committed to curricular reform, Dr. Kumar developed a curriculum in geriatrics for both in hospital and out of hospital sites for traditional internal medicine residents. In the past 7 years, she has developed a unique geriatric curriculum that encompasses geriatric learning experience at different trainee levels (medical students, residents, inter-professional trainees, and geriatric medicine fellows) and created an effective evaluation process to gage the learning achieved through these curricular implementations.

Gail McAvay – Dr. McAvay joined the Section of Geriatrics in 2004. Her efforts in biostatistics have been very helpful to faculty members in the Program on Aging. She has worked in multiple areas of chronic conditions of the elderly to evaluate depression, maintain physical function, and to evaluate health conditions in the elderly. She has worked closely with other faculty members of the Program on Aging in efforts to maintain older individuals at the highest possible function.

Marcia Mecca – Joining our faculty after completing her geriatric medicine fellowship in 2013, Dr. Mecca tirelessly works to improve prescribing for older persons through her efforts to develop and disseminate a new model for addressing polypharmacy. The multidisciplinary clinic that she has developed both directly improves patient care and serves as a highly effective means for teaching trainees from multiple disciplines about appropriate medication prescribing.

Brienne Miner – Dr. Miner is a recent recruit to the Section of Geriatrics. She served as a resident and chief resident in Internal Medicine, and post-doctoral fellow in Geriatric Medicine and Sleep Medicine at Yale. Her interests are the problems of dyspnea in the elderly as well as insomnia symptoms, describing how these symptoms change over time, as well as important factors in different domains that increase risk for insomnia in older adults.

Laura Morrison – Dr. Morrison was recruited to Yale in 2013 as an attending physician on the Yale New Haven Hospital Palliative Care service. She serves as director of Palliative Medical Education and program director for the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship. One of her major goals is to improve local palliative care training for health professional learners across disciplines and learner levels.

Jennifer Ouellet – After completing her residency in Internal Medicine and fellowship in Geriatrics at Yale, Dr. Ouellet joined the faculty in the Section of Geriatrics in 2017. She has developed an innovative interdisciplinary outpatient geriatric curriculum for Internal Medicine residents and has taken on responsibility for the Geriatrics inpatient consultation service at Yale New Haven Hospital.

Dr. Gail Sullivan is a Yale School of Medicine graduate who completed her internal medicine residency at Yale New Haven Hospital after which she was a Robert Wood Johnson clinical scholar. Dr. Sullivan was a member of the Yale Geriatrics faculty and director of the Geriatric Evaluation Unit at the Connecticut VA Healthcare System from 1983 to 1989, during which she inaugurated clinical geriatrics rotations for Yale Internal Medicine residents a. She is currently on the faculty at the Center of Aging, University of Connecticut, where she is associate director for education. Dr. Sullivan is the founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Graduate Medical Education, establishing it as a premiere publication in education, research, and dissemination.

Lisa Walke was recruited to Yale as an assistant professor of medicine in 2004. She was chief of the Section of Geriatrics at the Connecticut VA Healthcare System from 2006 to 2012. She was appointed as the associate chief for Clinical Affairs for the Section of Geriatrics in 2012. In June 2018 she will assume the position of chief of geriatrics at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.

The Section of Geriatrics has benefited from a long history of women leaders since its inception. Two of the first three professors in the Section of Geriatrics were women and five of the eight professors appointed since the creation of the section were women. Dr. Tinetti became the first woman section chief in the Department of Medicine in 2012 when she was appointed chief of Geriatrics. Currently, three of the six professors in the section are women, three of the six associate professors are women, and three of the four assistant professors are women. Women make up 56% of the full-time faculty in the section of geriatrics.

Notably, two women in the Section of Geriatrics at Yale (Mary Tinetti and Sharon Inouye) have been elected to the Institute of Medicine, now termed the National Academy of Medicine.