AGS members are medicine's advocates for the health and well being of older adults and frail elders - Rebecca Elon, MD

When I entered Baylor College of Medicine in 1977, I knew I wanted to be a geriatrician. Most everyone I encountered, faculty and fellow students alike, thought I was nuts. "Why in the world would you want to do that?" One of the first days of med school, I met Mark Traines, as he and I were both reaching for a book on aging at a used book fare. He and I were the only two in our class who would pursue a career in geriatrics. We took it upon ourselves to try to get some age related material injected into the preclinical curriculum and clinical clerkships at Baylor. We discovered that one of the cardiologists, Chief of Medicine at the Houston VA Hospital, Dr. Robert Luchi, was away on his British Geriatric Medicine sabbatical that year. He returned to establish Baylor's Division of Geriatric Medicine and became our faculty mentor. Dr. Porter Story became the first Baylor medicine resident to take a geriatric medicine elective with Dr. Luchi. I became Dr. Luchi's first geriatric medicine fellow, and helped write the fellowship curriculum and first training grant proposal. Nancy Wilson, MSW, and Linda Kaeser, RN, PhD were also important mentors for me in those formative years. It was the discovery of these kindred spirits early on that allowed me to pursue the path in geriatric medicine. Without them, I may have become dissuaded or overwhelmed.

As a geriatric medicine fellow, I traveled out to California to attend the week long UCLA Geriatric Medicine Course in Santa Monica. I wanted to make sure we were on the right track at home in Houston with our curriculum building. The most important thing I learned that week was no matter how strapped you are for cash, you should not let the travel agent book a cheap hotel for you south of Wilshire Avenue (though perhaps this has changed in the intervening 20+ years). After one night south of Wilshire and moving north the second day, I was able to settle into the joys of meeting more kindred spirits at the conference. Most memorable were the gracious dinners hosted in faculty homes. The Solomons, the Ouslanders, and the Kanes all opened their homes for attendees of the conference. This conference was my introduction to the people, the personalities, of the AGS.

My membership in the AGS is the way I keep in touch with the network of amazing kindred spirits across the nation. AGS members are medicine's advocates for the health and well being of older adults and frail elders. AGS members manifest their advocacy in many different pathways - through their research, their teaching, their clinical practice, their policy involvement, their community leadership. We take our advocacy into the board rooms, the budget meetings, the curriculum committees; our advocacy accompanies us on our daily rounds in the hospital, the clinic, the nursing home, assisted living facility, and in our patients' homes; we take our advocacy to the State House and to the Congress. While so much of medicine in America today is focused on the money, AGS members remain focused on the needs of our patients, their families, our communities, and our nation. AGS members are not satisfied with the current state of affairs. We are aware of and are trying to take care of the future by building new structures of care, by testing new financing of care, by pushing the boundaries of discovery and knowledge to guide us in our care of the aging and the aged members of our nation.

It is not easy work. My AGS colleagues inspire me, they challenge me, they ground me, they encourage me, and sometimes they amaze me. They keep me focused. They help me dream big dreams. And that is why I am a member of the AGS.

Rebecca Elon, MD, MPH, AGS Member, Medical Director of North Arundel Senior Care, Severna Park, MD