Thomas M. Gill, MD, Humana Foundation Professor of Medicine (Geriatrics) and professor of epidemiology (chronic diseases) and of Investigative Medicine; and director, Yale Program on Aging and Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center; was named a principal investigator (PI) for Yale School of Medicine (YSM) as part of the new Clinician-Scientists Transdisciplinary Aging Research (Clin-STAR) program. The American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) has been selected by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as the coordinating center for the new program.
Gill is a leading authority on the epidemiology and prevention of disability among older persons. He is a decorated geriatrician, winning such prestigious awards as the Paul Beeson Physician Faculty Scholars in Aging Research Award, Outstanding Scientific Achievement for Clinical Investigation Award from the American Geriatrics Society, and the Joseph T. Freeman Award from the Gerontological Society of America. He serves as a PI for STRIDE, the largest fall injury prevention trial to-date. His research accomplishments have been recognized through receipt of a MERIT Award from the NIH and election to the American Society of Clinical Investigation and Association of American Physicians. Gill joined the YSM faculty in 1994.
The Clin-STAR Coordinating Center will develop a multi-faceted, national platform to promote and enrich the career development, training and trans-disciplinary research of clinician-investigators across the U.S., particularly early stage investigators who are committed to careers in aging research.
NIA is funding Clin-STAR through a cooperative agreement with AFAR and three academic resource centers: YSM, Johns Hopkins University; and University of California, San Francisco. Comprised of established, senior physician-researchers, three Clin-STAR Cores (Leadership; Mentoring and Career Development; and Research and Dissemination) will lead the design and implementation of the proposed Clin-STAR activities, while the academic resource centers will support the three Cores in executing these activities. In partnership with the Program on Aging and Yale Institute for Network Science, the Yale Resource Center will lead a series of activities focused on gerontologic biostatistics and clinical research operations; will bring expertise in multifactorial geriatric health conditions, decision making, and goal-directed patient care; and will build a networking component into the program and use innovative network analyses for the annual evaluations.
In addition to Gill, the project's PIs are:
- Kristine Yaffe, MD, neurologist and the Scola Endowed Chair and Vice Chair and Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology and Epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco
- Jeremy Walston, MD, geriatrician and the Raymond and Anna Lublin Professor of Geriatric Medicine at Johns Hopkins University
- Odette van der Willik, Deputy Executive Director and Director of Grant Programs at AFAR
The Section of Geriatrics is one of the eleven sections within YSM’s Department of Internal Medicine. To learn more about their mission, visit Geriatrics.