FELLOWS-IN-TRAINING SECTION

Chair: Chitra Hamilton, MD
Please join other fellows, faculty members, and leaders in geriatrics at the annual Fellows-in-Training meeting. This event is a unique opportunity to share and discuss ideas, past experiences, and future career plans while networking with colleagues and mentors from across the country.

This year, please join our virtual session to discuss popular career paths in geriatrics. We will be joined by experts to speak about their experience, as well as the challenges the pandemic has presented, in the following areas:

• Research: Sharon Brangman, MD, FACP, AGSF
• Home-Based Primary Care: Thomas Cudjoe, MD, MPH
• Education: Helen Fernandez, MD, MPH
• Long-Term Care: Mike Wasserman, MD

Sharon Brangman, MD, FACP, AGSF has been on the faculty at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York since October 1989. She is currently a Distinguished Service Professor and Chair of the Department of Geriatrics. She is the director of the Geriatric Medicine Fellowship Program and is director of the Upstate Center of Excellence for Alzheimer's Disease. Dr. Brangman is also the Director of the Nappi Longevity Institute. Dr. Brangman received her undergraduate degree in biology from Syracuse University and her medical degree from SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse in 1981. She completed residency training in internal medicine at Montefiore Medical Center in The Bronx, New York, where she also completed fellowship training in geriatric medicine. Dr. Brangman is board certified in internal medicine and geriatric medicine as well as hospice and palliative care. Dr. Brangman is a past president of the American Geriatrics Society and also served as chair of the board. In addition, she is a past president and chair of the board of the Association of Directors of Geriatrics Academic Programs.

Thomas Cudjoe, MD, MPH is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University with many years of experience caring for patients in their homes. A Major in the Army Reserve Medical Corps, Dr. Cudjoe was deployed to the Urban Augmentation Medical Task Force last year and served at a New Jersey medical field station and then at University Hospital in Newark, NJ at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. A skilled researcher with a background in the effects of social isolation in older adults, he plans to apply his recent Grants for Early Medical/Surgical Specialists’ Transition to Aging Research (GEMSSTAR) award to studying social connections and health among older adults living in low-income housing communities. He earned his medical degree at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, completed residency at Howard University Hospital, and conducted a fellowship in Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology at Johns Hopkins University.

Helen Fernandez, MD, MPH is Program Director of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Fellowship Program in New York City. In her many roles as an educator, Dr. Fernandez has disseminated her expertise nationally and internationally. Her presentations at multiple conferences—including the AGS Annual Scientific Meeting and the International Association of Medical Education—and her published work in such scholarly outlets as the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society demonstrate her dedication to the science of education. An AGS member since 1999, Dr. Fernandez has been a member of the AGS Education Committee since 2015, after serving on the Ethnogeriatrics Committee. In 2019, she became course director of the AGS/ ADGAP Leadership and Life Skills Longitudinal Course for Fellows. She is currently Chair of the ADGAP Fellowship Working Group and a member of the ADGAP Board. She is the 2021 recipient of the AGS Dennis W. Jahnigen Award, and in 2013, she won the Society’s Outstanding Mid-Career Clinician Educator of the Year award.

Michael Wasserman, MD is a speaker and long-term care consultant in Irvine, CA. Dr. Wasserman is a geriatrician who co-founded Senior Care of Colorado, one of the largest private primary care geriatrics practices in the country. Most recently he served as CEO for Rockport Healthcare Services, where he oversaw the largest nursing home chain in California. Prior to that he served as Executive Director, Care Continuum, for HSAG, the QIN-QIO in California.