The American Geriatrics Society -

For Immediate Release
May 5, 2006

For more information:
Erin Weller
(212) 308-1414 x 329

Donna Regenstreif, PhD, Wins American Geriatrics Society Public Service Award for Contributions to Advancing Geriatrics and Improving the Health of Older Americans

Chicago, IL -- For her incalculable contributions to advancing the field of geriatrics and improving the health of older adults, the American Geriatrics Society presented its David H. Solomon Distinguished Public Service Award to Donna Regenstreif, PhD, here at its annual scientific meeting today.

AGS's public service award, presented each year to an organization or individual whose work enhances the health and well being of older people, is named for David H. Solomon, MD, founding director of the Center on Aging at UCLA's School of Medicine.

Dr. Regenstreif, the John A. Hartford Foundation's Senior Program Officer from 1987 until her retirement last year, oversaw countless innovative programs to support geriatrics research and geriatrics training for physicians, surgeons and other medical specialists, medical school students, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. She helped launch and nurture programs to provide vital healthcare services to older adults and support health policy that enhances care for the aging. The New York city-based John A. Hartford Foundation is the country's leading philanthropy with a sustained interest in aging and health.

"Everyone at AGS who has worked with Donna knows her commitment to geriatrics and her great vision in fostering development and growth in the field," said AGS President Jane Potter, MD, presenting Dr. Regenstreif with the award. "Throughout her years at the Hartford Foundation she has pioneered innumerable innovative projects that have advanced the field tremendously."

In a tribute, Dr. Solomon hailed Dr. Regenstreif as a key figure in the "geriatrics renaissance" that began with the publication of Robert Butler's 1975 Pulitzer Prize-winning expose on the plight of older Americans, Why Survive? Being Old in America, and the subsequent founding of the National Institute on Aging, and the Veteran's Administration's Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Centers. In the decades that followed, geriatrics programs were established in many medical schools, numerous geriatrics fellowship programs were created, and key research into interventions that would improve the health and quality of life of older adults was undertaken.

"Where would geriatrics have been without Donna Regenstreif?" Dr. Solomon asked, in his tribute to Dr. Regenstreif. "She persuaded the Hartford Foundation to make geriatrics its almost exclusive focus. She traveled the country to meet and guide the leaders of geriatrics training programs that were trying to get started. She made sure that these programs and people were supported financially. It required a dynamo with the vision to see what the frontier of health care would be in the 21st century and the commitment and energy to make the right things happen. That dynamo was and is Donna Regenstreif."

Founded in 1942, the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) is a nationwide, not-for-profit association of geriatrics health care professionals dedicated to improving the health, independence and quality of life of all older people. The society supports this mission through activities in: clinical practice; professional education on the clinical care of older people; research; public education and information; public policy efforts; and through collaborative relationships with other organizations. For more information about AGS programs and initiatives, visit the AGS Web site at www.americangeriatrics.org.