AFAR is pleased to announce the recipient of our 2024 Terrie Fox Wetle Rising Star Award in Health Services and Aging Research, Megan Huisingh-Scheetz, MD, MPH, AGSF.
This award honors a health services researcher in an early or middle phase of their 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 and former NIA K23 recipient, Dr. Huisingh-Scheetz has a specific interest in understanding the role of technology in advancing translational frailty science. Her work targets two areas of technology: accelerometry and voice-activated assistant devices. She studies how accelerometry-based mobility patterns relate to frailty and aging biomarkers and whether these devices can improve our understanding of frailty, enhance the frailty assessment and support frailty management. As a clinician, she established a novel frailty evaluation clinic in 2011, the Successful Aging and Frailty Evaluation™ (SAFE) clinic, in which she assesses and manages frailty in all referred patients and support their caregivers.
She has published about the challenges of frailty implementation, produced national reference data for frailty measures, and created frailty assessment and training tools to support clinical frailty integration. She also developed a new technology-based program called “EngAGE” that leverages a voice-activate assistant (e.g., Alexa Echo Show) to deliver long-term exercise and socialization support to frail adults while empowering their caregivers, a project conducted in partnership with NORC at the University of Chicago and Orbita, Inc. She is currently leading a randomized-controlled trial testing EngAGE’s efficacy on physical and social function among multimorbid, homebound, African American older adults.
Dr. Huisingh-Scheetz is an Associate Professor in the Section of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, the Associate Director of the Aging Research Program, and Co-Director of the Successful Aging and Frailty Evaluation Clinic at the University of Chicago.
The Wetle Rising Star Award is one of AFAR’s four Annual Scientific Awards of Distinction. Dr. Huisingh-Scheetz will receive her award at special ceremony and reception organized by AFAR at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Gerontological Society of America on November 14th, 2024, at 6:30 pm PT. Dr. Huisingh-Scheetz will present a lecture on her research entitled, “Harnessing Health Services Research to Fuel Frailty Implementation and Innovation.”
Read a related press release here.
Learn more about the November 14th ceremony honoring Dr. Huisingh-Scheetz here.
Learn more about the Wetle Rising Star Award and past recipients here.
