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For Immediate Release
July 23, 2002

For Further Information:
Pamela Ingham
(212) 308-1414, ext. 302

       New York, NY- Taking the lead on the urgent need for leaders in the surgical and related medical specialties who will bring an understanding of the unique characteristics of older patients to surgical training and practice, the American Geriatrics Society, John A. Hartford Foundation, and the Atlantic Philanthropies are delighted to announce the winners of the first ten Dennis W. Jahnigen Career Development Scholars Awards.

       This ground-breaking program seeks to ameliorate the shortage of trained academicians with a special interest in and knowledge of the care of older people in the surgical and related medical specialties, an area where the average age of patients is rapidly rising and where health outcomes are strongly influenced by the quality of care provided.

       The highly competitive two-year faculty development awards of $200,000 each provide a foundation on which individuals can initiate and sustain a career in geriatrics-oriented research and education. Ten young researchers from anesthesiology, general surgery, emergency medicine, ophthalmology, physical medicine and rehabilitation, orthopedic surgery, and urology have been selected for this year's awards for their innovative proposals in falls prevention, vision rehabilitation, incontinence, and a host of other areas that are critical to senior health but poorly represented in research on the national level.

       Dr. John Burton, Director, Division Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology at the John Hopkins School of Medicine, and Chair of the Dennis W. Jahnigen Career Development Scholars Awards Committee, was pleased with the exceptionally high quality of the proposals received for this new award. He added that "the committee anticipates that each of these ten scholars will serve as an inspiration and role model for others pursuing academic leadership roles in the geriatrics aspect of their specialties."

       According to Dr. David Solomon, Director Emeritus of the UCLA Center on Aging and Co-Director with Dr. John Burton of the AGS/Hartford program Increasing Geriatrics Expertise in Surgical and Related Medical Specialties, Dennis W. Jahnigen, MD, the namesake of the new awards, "was a leading educator and geriatrician, and a driving force behind the movement to include geriatrics training in all medical specialty areas. With a looming shortage of geriatricians in general and a relative dearth of specialty physicians trained to address the complexities of health in aging, these career awards are not only a fitting tribute to his life's work but a much-needed boon to the survival and growth of geriatric research in areas that have been neglected for far too long."

This year's scholars are:

Anesthesiology
Deborah J. Culley, MD
Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA
"Mechanisms of Persistent Post-anesthetic Cognitive Impairment with Aging"

Emergency Medicine
Kennon Heard, MD
University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver, Colorado
"Acute drug toxicity in Elderly Patients: A National Study of Overdoses, Adverse Drug Reactions and Poisoning"

Stephen Meldon, MD
Case Western Reserve University at MetroHealth Medical Center, Cleveland, Ohio
"An ED-Based Falls Prevention Screening and Referral Program"

General Surgery
Alan Dardik MD, PhD
Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut
"Effects of Aging on Endothelial Cell Responses to Hemodynamic Forces"

Sandhya A. Lagoo-Deenadayalan, MD, PhD
Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina
"Aging and the Immune Response to Surgical Stress"

Ophthalmology
David S. Friedman MD, MPH
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
"Vision Restoration in Assisted Living Residents"

Enrique Garcia-Valenzuela, MD, PhD
Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia
"Stem Cell Therapy for Age-related Retinal Disease"

Orthopaedic Surgery
Khaled J. Saleh, MD, MSC, FRSCS
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
"Effectiveness of Revision Knee Arthroplasty: A Multicenter Study"

Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation
Jonathan Bean MD, MS
Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
"Weighted Vest Training in Mobility Limited Elders"

Urology
Larissa V. Rodriguez MD
UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, California
"Autologous Adipose Derived Stem Cells for the Reconstruction of the Atrophic Aging Female Urethra: Tissue-Engineering Techniques for the Treatment for Stress Urinary Incontinence"

For additional information on the award or to receive an application for the 2003 Dennis W. Jahnigen Career Development Scholars Awards Program, please visit the AGS website at www.americangeriatrics.org, or contact Marina Shaykevich at mshaykevich@americangeriatrics.org

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