AFAR is pleased to announce the recipient of our 2023 Terrie Fox Wetle Rising Star Award in Health Services and Aging Research recipient, Claire K. Ankuda, MD, MPH, MSc.
This award honors a health services researcher in an early or middle phase of his/her career who has already made important contributions with work that respects the value of multidisciplinary health services science and that is likely to be highly influential in shaping practice and research for decades to come. The award is a framed citation and carries a cash prize of $5,000.
As a clinician-investigator, Dr. Ankuda aims to improve Medicare policies to better support older adults with functional disability and serious illness, many of whom have Alzheimer’s disease or related dementias. Her research focuses predominantly on the Medicare Advantage program, given its growing role in insuring older adults, as well as other policies that influence home-based support, including Medicare home health and hospice.
In addition to first- or senior- authoring more than 20 publications included in leading journals such as Health Affairs, the NEJM, JAMA, and JAMA Internal Medicine, Dr. Ankuda’s research on the Medicare Advantage program has also been cited in Government Accountability Office investigative reports.
Dr. Ankuda is a hospice and palliative medicine physician and Associate Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in the Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, as well as a 2020 Paul B. Beeson Emerging Leaders Career Development Award in Aging (K76) scholar. Her work has also been recognized with an American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine Emerging Leader Award and an American Geriatrics Society New Investigator Award.
The Wetle Award is one of AFAR’s three annual Scientific Awards of Distinction. These awards will be presented at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Gerontological Society of America in November 2023, where Dr. Ankuda will present a lecture on her research.
Learn more about the Wetle award and past recipients here.
Read a related press release on Dr. Ankunda’s award here.
