1. AGS Student Researcher Fund
2. Update on a Trio of Rising
(M)STARS
3. Q&A: The
John A. Hartford Foundation’s Corinne Rieder and Gavin Hougham
4.
How to Start a Geriatrics
Student Interest Group
5. 2009 MSTAR Awardees Selected!
6. The MSTAR Toolkit: Geriatrics &
Aging Research 101
7. Helpful Links / Geriatrics Recruitment and
Student Opportunities
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American Geriatrics Society (AGS) Raises Funds for
Student Poster Session Presenters
The 2009 AGS Student Poster Session, part
of the organization’s Annual Scientific Meeting, took place on April 30 in
Chicago. A total of 143 students were invited to the session, and 139
ultimately presented their research. "The session gets bigger every year,"
says Li-Chia Ong of the AGS.
That is due in part to the AGS’s Student
Research Fund, which helps defray the travel expenses of students invited
to present their research at the session. Thanks to the Fund, 87 students
received travel stipends to this year’s Student Poster Session.
To raise money for the Fund, the AGS has
held the "An Evening with Friends" benefit during the Annual Scientific
Meeting for the past seven years. More than 200 AGS members, friends, and
supporters attended the 2009 benefit on April 30 at the Hyatt Regency
Hotel’s Crystal Ballroom. They enjoyed dancing, drinks, dessert, and an
improv performance. The benefit raised more than $22,000 for the Fund.
While most of the guests dressed up in
eveningwear, AGS staffers stood out most. They wore lime green T-shirts
that announced their participation in the 2009 JP Morgan Chase Corporate
Challenge on June 11. Sixteen AGS and AGS Foundation for Health in
Aging staffers ran, walked, or jogged 3.5 miles through New York City’s
Central Park to raise money for the Student Researcher Fund. They raised
about $4,000 to help students attend next year’s poster session.
To donate to the Student Researcher Fund,
go to www.healthinaging.org/donate/first_form_new.asp.
You can also send a check to the attention of Li-Chia Ong at the AGS
Office:
The Empire State Building
350 Fifth
Avenue, Suite 801
New York, NY 10118
Or, call the AGS at (800) 247-4779 and ask
for Erin Corley. Thank you!
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Rising (M)STARS
Three former MSTAR Scholars have recently
made some significant achievements. Read their stories below, and please
join us in congratulating them! You can find more news and notes about our
amazing MSTAR scholars at our new MSTAR news page, www.afar.org/MSTAR_news.html.
MAKING HEADLINES
When 2008 MSTAR
Scholar Michael Flaherty presented his research at the AGS and AFAR
student poster sessions on April 30 and May 2, he was thrilled to have an
audience of clinicians and fellow medical students. But that audience grew
rapidly after Reuters and Medscape ran stories about his research. Soon,
his name was all over the Internet.
"It’s a great feeling to know that my research may
impact not only other clinicians, but the general public as well,"
Flaherty says.
Flaherty recently completed his second year
at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine. For his
MSTAR project, he worked with mentor Dr. Alireza Atri last summer at
Massachusetts General Hospital.
Flaherty and Dr. Atri sought to determine
whether Vitamin E or anti-inflammatory medications would affect functional
and cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease patients. To do so, they
analyzed 12 to 15 years’ worth of clinical data collected from Alzheimer’s
patients. They found that patients taking Vitamin E experienced a modest
slowing of functional decline over a period of about three years. Those
taking anti-inflammatories experienced a smaller slowing of cognitive
decline.
While the findings were in line with
another study that came out a couple of years ago, this was the first
clinical study of the effect of Vitamin E and anti-inflammatories on
Alzheimer’s patients.
Other studies have found that Vitamin E
actually has a negative impact on Alzheimer’s patients. "There’s a
lot of controversy as to whether Vitamin E is in fact helpful," Flaherty
says. "Hopefully one day we’ll be able to show that Vitamin E is worth the
risks."
To that end, Flaherty will return to
Massachusetts General Hospital this summer to do more work on the project.
Based on feedback he received at the poster sessions, he will answer more
questions, such as exact dosages of the medications given to the patients.
He hopes to get the paper published in a scientific journal.
For now, though, Flaherty is just enjoying
his small dose of fame. Says Dr. Atri, "Knowing Mike, I think we can all
be reassured that he'll remember his research/lab roots despite his
current celebrity status!"
BEING PUBLISHED
Yang Shen, a 2007
MSTAR Scholar, will soon get to see her name in fine print. Her paper,
based on her MSTAR research and findings, was recently published in
the Journal of Vascular Surgery. "I am very happy!" she says.
Shen, a fourth-year student at the University of
Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine, completed her MSTAR project at her
home school. Her mentor was Dr. William Dale, head of the school’s
geriatrics department. She also worked with Dr. Margaret Schwarze, a
vascular surgeon at the University of Wisconsin.
Shen’s project focused on abdominal aortic
aneurysms (AAA), which occur when the large vessel that supplies blood to
the abdomen, pelvis, and legs becomes abnormally large or balloons out.
There are two treatment options for AAA, which can be fatal. One option is
open surgery. The other is endovascular repair, a relatively non-invasive
procedure introduced in the 1990s.
The trio compared the short-term outcomes
of the two options in patients 85 and older, for whom open surgery can be
dangerous. They found that short-term survival rates are consistently
improving for patients of that age who undergo endovascular repair.
"We were surprised at how well patients
tolerated the procedure, considering their age and their existing
co-morbidities. I hope the paper will make more surgeons aware of the
option of endovascular repair for patients who are initially not thought
of as surgical candidates," Shen says. "The patients can have a prolonged
life, with a good quality of life."
Shen is the second author of the paper,
entitled Age-Related Trends in Utilization and Outcome of Open
and Endovascular Repair for Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm in the United
States: 2001-2006. It’s not the first paper she’s had published,
but she says this publication will be the most gratifying. "It was a big
collaboration and we worked on it for quite some time, so I’m excited,"
she explains. Dr. Dale is the paper’s senior author, and Dr. Schwarze is
the first author.
While the publication has been a highlight
of Shen’s MSTAR experience, another aspect of it stands out for her:
accompanying Dr. Dale on his visits with patients in the clinic. "The
experience will help me greatly," she says, "in my thinking, in my
treatment plans, and in my relationship with geriatric patients."
WINNING AN AWARD
2006 MSTAR Scholar Faraz Ahmad has had a busy couple of
months. He graduated from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of
Medicine, moved to Philadelphia, and began his residency at the University
of Pennsylvania. On top of that, he won a prestigious award for graduating
Pritzker students at the school’s Senior Scientific Session, which took
place on May 7.
Ahmad won the Catherine Dobson Prize, for
best oral presentation given by a non-PhD student in the area of clinical
investigation of research done in medical school. He presented the
research he did for his MSTAR project and throughout medical school.
Ahmad’s mentor for the project was Dr.
William Dale. Their aim was to compare the differences between African
American men and white men in their understanding of the likelihood of
prostate cancer at the time of biopsy. They found that African Americans
more dramatically underestimate their likelihood of having prostate cancer
than whites.
Overall, African Americans are 1.6 times as
likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer as whites, and their mortality
rate is almost two times higher than whites’. Yet in Ahmad’s large sample
of patients, 52% of African Americans believed it was impossible for them
to have prostate cancer, while only 18% of whites believed the same. "We
expected there to be some disparity, but we didn’t expect it to be that
stark," says Ahmad.
He believes the reason for the disparity is
that African American patients either do not receive the right information
to make predictions or are simply overly hopeful.
Ahmad was one of nearly 50 students to
submit abstracts for the Senior Scientific Session. Nine of those students
were selected for a general competition; nine, including Ahmad, were
chosen for the oral competition; and the remaining students provided
poster presentations. They were evaluated by a group of researchers from
the university.
Of the nine students who gave oral
presentations, three were given by non-PhD students in the area of
clinical investigation. Ahmad learned he had won the award, for which he
received a cash prize, during an awards ceremony at the end of the
Session. "It was a pleasant surprise," he says. "The other two
presentations were stellar, and very deserving as well."
Ahmad has now dived into residency. He will
complete three years of internal medicine, and is still unsure what will
follow. "Whatever practice I have within medicine, I want it to involve
geriatric patients," he explains. He says the geriatrics training he
received through the MSTAR program will prove invaluable in this endeavor.
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Five Questions for the Hartford
Foundation’s Corinne Rieder and Gavin Hougham
Founded in 1929, The John A. Hartford
Foundation is a committed champion of training, research, and service
system innovations that promote the health and independence of America's
older adults. The Foundation has invested in the MSTAR program since 1994.
We caught up with Corinne H. Rieder, EdD, Hartford’s executive director
and treasurer, and Gavin W. Hougham, PhD, senior program officer and
manager of the Foundation’s medicine programs, including the MSTAR
program.
Why did the Hartford Foundation begin
investing in the MSTAR program?
Dr. Cory Rieder: We began the
Hartford Medical Student Geriatrics Scholars Program (now called MSTAR) in
1993 to give medical students, at the beginning of their academic studies,
an opportunity to learn about geriatrics, geriatricians, and aging
research, with the hope that they would be attracted into the field,
especially as future faculty members. Hartford staff believed that the
program was important because we were frequently told by geriatrics
faculty members that first year medical students did not really know what
geriatrics was or what geriatricians do.
Dr. Gavin Hougham: The idea was to give students
exposure not only to research in general to help produce more academic
physicians in all specialties, but to help create and widen the pipeline
into geriatrics proper. As we know, it has low visibility in the medical
school curriculum, and it’s not until students get into the clinics — into
the hospital, and then into residency — that they see how many older
patients they’re really taking care of. So the idea is to get ahead of
that game and get them at the first available opportunity, which is
usually right after their first year as they’re rising into their second
year.
CR: We also believed that even if
these students didn’t become geriatrics faculty members or geriatricians,
the program was a good way of giving future physicians, specialists and
sub-specialists in other fields, an introduction to the field and
knowledge about the unique health care needs of older patients.
Is this the only program that serves
earlier medical students?
GH: In terms of Hartford-funded projects,
this is the earliest one that is specifically focused on medical students
in aging. We have grant programs throughout the hierarchy of medical
education, starting with this one and then moving on up all the way
through the senior faculty level. Through our Centers of Excellence in
Geriatric Medicine and Training program, several sites have programs that
reach into their undergraduate colleges to help expose students to
potential careers in aging and health professions, and a couple even
target high school students!**
Why have you continued to fund the MSTAR program for so
many years?
CR: We believe it is an outstanding program that
provides students with didactic, clinical, and research experience in
geriatrics. It’s especially important to give students a glimpse of a
field that typically has low visibility in the medical school curriculum.
Students seem to enjoy the program and the return on this investment has
exceeded our expectations. Fifteen years into the program, some of our
earliest MSTAR students — there are about 1300 students who have gone
through the program so far — are now medical school faculty members. Often
at site visits to the Hartford-funded Centers of Excellence, a young
faculty member will tell me that their interest in geriatrics began as an
MSTAR scholar.
GH: At our last Hartford board
meeting, we had Dr. Mary Tinetti, a geriatrician and director of the
program on aging at Yale University, help us evaluate the MSTAR project.
She reported to our trustees some of her observations as an objective,
third-party consultant. She did a terrific job of outlining some of what
we’ve been talking about here, putting it in the context of the nation’s
need for increased numbers of physicians, geriatricians, and specialists
of all types to go into this field, or at least to have a heightened
sensitivity and understanding of the special needs of the older patient.
We have an internal rating system here at the Foundation that we use to
keep track of the progress of our projects, and the MSTAR program usually
gets our highest ratings. It’s a consistently excellent program.
Is the Hartford Foundation making
efforts to find other partners to join the MSTAR program?
GH: Well,
our major partner in the program is, of course, the National Institute on
Aging, and they’ve been wonderful. But, we started talking to AFAR a year
ago about trying to ramp up the marketing of the program to other
potential funders, so we put together a new MSTAR
marketing brochure a couple of months ago as part of that plan.
CR: The new brochure gives concrete
examples of physicians who benefited from and really enjoyed the program.
GH: AFAR is also trying to help
bring new funders into this work. But, it takes a long time to develop new
co-funding relationships, so this is part of a longer-term strategy of
bringing new folks into the field, raising the awareness of the program,
and using the marketing materials to raise the visibility of the need
among our peer co-funders.
CR: And, any time we attend meetings
with foundation peers, we always talk about MSTAR and other Hartford
-funded programs. We also encourage deans and other university leaders to
make funding for the MSTAR program a part of their development efforts.
So, yes, we are continually searching for new foundations and wealthy
individuals to provide financial support to MSTAR and other medical,
nursing, social work or service delivery programs to improve the health
care of older people.
Does the Hartford Foundation plan to
continue investing in the MSTAR program in the future?
GH:
Absolutely. The current five-year Hartford MSTAR grant is winding down,
but we’re preparing a recommendation to our Trustees for a renewal of the
program in December. We are committed to working with AFAR and other
funders to continue this great program!
** To
learn more about the Centers of Excellence in Geriatric Medicine and
Training, please visit the Hartford
Foundation's web site or GeriatricsRecruitment.org.
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How to Start a Geriatrics Student
Interest Group
Geriatrics student interest groups provide
educational programs for students interested in geriatric medicine and
increase the visibility of the field at medical schools. They’re also a
great way to get more students interested in geriatric medicine.
Want to start a student interest group at
your school? Here are some tips from the American Geriatrics Society:
- 1. Plan your first meeting. Choose a
date and time. Lunchtime meetings usually have the best attendance rate.
Invite practicing geriatricians from the community to speak at the
meeting.
- 2. Get the word out. Post fliers on
bulletin boards and in student newsletters, and send them to students’
campus mailboxes. You can also announce the meeting between class
lectures. Try to recruit as many first- and second-year students as
possible, as they have more time for group activities and can make sure
the group continues.
- 3. Designate officers. Be sure to
choose a secretary, who will record ideas for future reference, and a
financial officer to manage the group’s funds.
- 4. Develop a budget. This should
include costs for group newsletters, field trips, refreshments, and
audiovisual equipment rentals.
- 5. Raise funds. To secure funding
for regular group activities, contact departments within your school
such as the medical student council, the dean’s office, and the office
of continuing medical education. To help fund special events, try
outside agencies including the AGS student chapter fund, local or
national foundations, pharmaceutical companies, and local nursing homes.
Call the organizations and find out whom you should send the request to
and whether there are any special instructions. Then send a letter that
describes your group, the reason for your request, and the amount you’re
requesting.
- 6. Consider an affiliation. The AGS
student chapter network and the American Medical Student Association
(AMSA) can provide guidance, funding, and other benefits for your group.
Contact these organizations for more information!
You may also want to consider partnering
with a neighbor institution to create your chapter. Baylor College of
Medicine and the University of Texas Medical School at Houston joined
forces to create The Texas Geriatrics Interest Foundation (TGIF). This
student chapter is the first part of Baylor's four-year
elective geriatrics track for medical students.
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2009 MSTAR Awardees Selected!
One-hundred thirty-six medical students
have been chosen as this year’s MSTAR Scholars.
Several National Training Centers— Johns
Hopkins University, the University of Michigan, the University of
Pittsburgh, UCLA, and UCSD— conducted their own reviews of the students
who applied to their institutions. The National Selection Committee
reviewed the applications that will be supported with private funding,
applications to the University of Hawaii, and a subset of Harvard
applications.
The National Selection Committee included
the following five members: Anita Woods, PhD, Baylor College of Medicine;
Evelyn Granieri, MD, Columbia University College of Physicians and
Surgeons; James Rudolph, MD, Harvard Medical School; Veronica LoFaso, MD,
Weill Medical College of Cornell University; and Alison Moore, MD,
University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine. Dr. Woods served
as the Chair of the Committee.
The Committee rated the applications on a
five-point scale, with one representing the highest possible score and
five the lowest, using decimals to fine-tune the scores. Criteria for the
ratings included the following:
- the applicant’s ability and promise demonstrated by academic
performance, statement of purpose, and letter of support.
- interest in gerontological issues as demonstrated by course work,
independent study, volunteer activity, etc.
- interest and potential for success in an academic career.
Once all the scores and rankings were in,
AFAR and the National Training Centers made the final funding decisions.
Visit http://www.afar.org/grantee-list09.html#10 for a list of
the 2009 MSTAR Scholars. Congratulations to all of the awardees!
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The MSTAR Toolkit: Geriatrics &
Aging Research 101
The MSTAR program is often a student's
first experience in geriatrics and aging research. We developed a toolkit equipped with
resources to provide a general orientation to the field of geriatrics and
aging research, and to help you prepare to get the most out of your
experience as an MSTAR scholar. Of course, we hope it's a valuable
resource for you during-- and even after-- your MSTAR project!
If you have an additional resources or tips
to add to the toolkit, please let Veronica know (veronica@afar.org)!
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Helpful Links / Geriatrics Recruitment
and Student Opportunities
Boston University Summer Institute in
Geriatric Medicine:
www.bmc.org/geriatrics/educationMedicalStudents_SIGM.htm
AGS Local Geriatrics Mentoring
Program:
www.americangeriatrics.org/education/local_mentoring_program.shtml
Geriatrics career information, including
profiles of geriatricians:
www.americangeriatrics.org/education/career_caring.shtml
AGS Resident Recruitment Initiative: www.americangeriatrics.org/education/residents/
AGS student chapters and other information
for medical students: www.americangeriatrics.org/education/geristudents/
American Medical Student Association (AMSA)
Geriatrics Interest Group:
www.amsa.org/ger/
American Association of Medical Colleges
(AAMC) Organization of Student Representatives:
www.aamc.org/members/osr/
AAMC Careers in Medicine program helps
students select a specialty and apply to residency:
www.services.aamc.org/careersinmedicine/
MSTAR information and online application:
www.afar.org/medstu.html
MSTAR news: www.afar.org/mstar_news.html
MSTAR Toolkit: www.afar.org/toolkit.html
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_____________________________________________
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