Program for Friday May 09, 2025

Co-Chairs: Caitlin Jones, MD & Priscilla Yee, MD

The mission of the Acute Care SIG is to improve hospitalization outcomes for older adults through improvements in clinical care, dissemination of research findings, and promotion of health professional education.

Chair: Maria D'Souza, MD, MPH

This SIG will provide a forum for AGS members who are dedicated to providing clinical care for individuals living with dementia and support for their caregivers, in order to discuss clinical questions, exchange information and resources, and explore ideas for improving our individual and collective practice, towards advancing optimal dementia care. 

Co-Chairs: Julia Hiner, MD & Carrie Rubenstein, MD

The mission of this SIG is to improve the lives of older adults affected by elder mistreatment through clinical care and prevention, education, research, resource-sharing, and advocacy efforts. Our members include national leaders, health professionals, educators, researchers, and learners-in-training. We strive to spearhead elder mistreatment (including elder abuse, neglect, exploitation) initiatives in our communities, country, and globally, and raise awareness for issues surrounding elder mistreatment, while also serving as a networking group for colleagues.

Trainees will be testing their knowledge via interactive quiz stations supervised by Geriatric Faculty from various Universities/Medical Centers. Students, residents and fellows will have the opportunity to network and interact with leaders in geriatric education. Questions will address important geriatric topics, such as aging physiology and its effects on disease, dermatological conditions, functional impairment and use of assistive devices. Come learn, have fun, and win prizes in a relaxed setting!

Chair: Saket Saxena, MD 

The Geriatric Emergency Department (GER-ED) Special Interest Group brings together all health professionals interested in improving the care of older adults in Emergency Departments. We review the challenges older adults face in EDs and work on creating collaborative models of care to sustain the development of Geriatric EDs and Age Friendly Initiatives in Emergency Departments. Please join us to explore growing opportunities to advance the care of older adults in Emergency Departments.

Chair: Lyn Weinberg

The mission of our Hospital Elder Life Program (HELP) / Delirium Prevention is to allow all current and potentially interested HELP sites to come together to hear the latest updates about HELP and delirium prevention, as well as network and discuss successes and challenges anywhere in the planning or implementation process. The Hospital Elder Life Program (HELP) is an innovative model of hospital care designed to prevent delirium and functional decline and to improve overall quality of hospital care for older persons. The program has been demonstrated to be both effective and cost-effective, with the potential for large cost savings.

Chair: Sean Huang, MD

The mission of the IT Issues SIG is to establish a venue for members with an interest in Information Technology as it applies to geriatrics. We see Electronic Health Records (EHR) as a means for improving medical care by reducing error rates, improving efficiency, augmenting communication, facilitating optimal reimbursement, and decreasing expenses. We seek to provide information, support, and an organized center for coordinating information and resources to optimize the use of EHRs in senior healthcare environments like ambulatory and long-term care healthcare settings. 

Co-Chairs: Josette A. Rivera, MD & Todd C. James, MD

The mission of this SIG is to explore how broad health professional interest in collaboration is changing health education and practice. While geriatrics has long recognized the importance of teams, this has not been a widely recognized focus of health education or practice until recently. Interprofessional education refers to "two or more professionals learn[ing] about, from and with each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes." All are welcome!

Co-Chairs: Thomas Cudjoe, MD, MP & Snigdha Jain, MD

The Junior Faculty Research Career Development Special Interest Group is for junior faculty members and research fellows pursuing careers in aging-related research. Topics will include annual updates on funding opportunities and SIG activities, planning future AGS meeting symposia, and election of new SIG leaders.

Chair: Maria Carney, MD

The mission of this SIG is to share information on the proposals, models of care, community integration collaboration networks, and politics that center on building geographic reforms across all service providers.

Co-Chairs: Sarah D. Berry, MD, MPH & Cathleen Colon-Emeric, MD, MHS

The mission of this SIG is to discuss future strategies to promote improved education and care for bone loss in older adults.

Co-Chairs: Claire Davenport, MD & Ardeshir Hashimi, MD, FACP, AGSF

Older adults with multiple chronic conditions (MCC) receive care that is fragmented, burdensome, and most importantly is not focused on what matters most to them. There is little evidence to guide disease-specific care for people with MCC, who are generally excluded from randomized controlled trials, leading to uncertainty in decision-making for clinicians. Guideline-driven care is not always applicable to older adults with multiple chronic conditions, as it may not accrue the expected benefits and may lead to treatment burden. Most importantly, this care may not be focused on what matters most to persons with MCCs, the health outcomes they prioritize when faced with tradeoffs and the treatments they are willing and able to adhere to. This Special Interest Group aims to identify alternatives to disease guideline-based care, specifically ways to implement patient priorities aligned decision making. Patient priorities aligned decision making calls upon patients and caregivers to articulate their health priorities; communicate those priorities to all team members; patients, caregivers and clinicians then together choose the healthcare best aligned with these health priorities.

Co-Chairs: Joshua D. Niznik, PharmD, PhD & Nagham Ailabouni, Bpharm, PhD

The Polypharmacy SIG is dedicated to issues related to medication use in older adults. Our goal is to facilitate education and discussion on this topic, both within the group and for a wider audience.