Research in the Division of Geriatrics
Research in geriatrics at Emory is possible because of the rich environment of the campus and of Atlanta. Within the Division, there is a focus on clinically-related research, but many other campus units emphasize basic and bench-top research.
The clinical resources are robust and also allow for many research opportunities. Wesley Woods at Emory University is a unique resource: one of the nation's few campuses devoted to the health and well-being of the older adult. Founded by the United Methodist Church and Emory University, Wesley Woods Center serves more than 30,000 elderly and chronically ill patients each year. In 2007, there were 2,375 admissions and 37,584 outpatient visits. The Wesley Woods campus includes Wesley Woods Hospital, a 100-bed geriatric specialty facility; an outpatient primary care clinic; a 250-bed skilled nursing care facility (Budd Terrace); a 201-unit residential retirement facility (Wesley Woods Towers), with some dedicated personal care units; a 25-bed inpatient hospice service, and a privately operated teaching nursing home (A.G. Rhodes at Wesley Woods) with currently 150 beds (42 subacute, 108 long-term). Wesley Woods is well known for its multi disciplinary research programs in depression in aging, sleep disorders, rehabilitation, and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
The Atlanta VA has an extensive array of geriatric clinical programs, including a teaching nursing home (100-beds), a home-based primary care clinic, a geriatric outpatient care clinic, outpatient and inpatient consultative palliative care clinics, and specialty clinics in geropsychiatry, urinary incontinence, and neuropsychology. The Atlanta VA's research program, jointly administered by the Atlanta Research and Education Foundation, involves over 600 projects, conducted by more than 140 principal investigators, four of whom are prestigious VA Senior Career Scientists, with a total grant funding of more than $28 million from VA and non-VA sources.
Emory University is a resource rich environment with the ability and past history of accomplishment in geriatric clinical programs and research on aging. Among the centers for specialized research and study are the Emory Vaccine Research Center, Yerkes Primate Research Center, Winship Cancer Institute, Center for Neurobehavioral Sciences,Emory Center on Health Outcomes and Quality, Center for Ethics, and the Carter Center. Within the greater Atlanta community, there are tremendous synergies- many realized and others possible- with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Cancer Society, and collaborations with the Georgia Institute of Technology, particularly with the Aware Home Research Institute and the Center for Assistive Technology and Environmental Access. Since 1997, medical researchers at the EUSM have collaborated with the engineering faculty at Georgia Tech to develop a joint biomedical engineering program ranked sixth in the nation byU.S. News & World Report. Nearly all of these institutions have major programs focused on aging.
Several of Emory's premier research programs have an aging focus. Firstly, VA Senior Research Career Scientist, Dr. Stuart Zola, Emory University Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Yerkes National Research Primate Center, is interested in cognitive aging and dementia. Secondly, VA Senior Research Career Scientist Dr. Ronald Schuchard an Associate Professor of Neurology, leads the Atlanta VA Rehabilitation Research Center with a core direct funding of $750,000 per year. The mission of the Center is to improve the everyday function and quality of life of aging Veterans with vision loss.
On the Emory campus, the Kathleen B. and Mason I. Lowance Center for Human Immunology is devoted to improving the health and wellness for all generations by advancing the science of human immunology. The program's focus on immune aging is on immunosenescence and its researchers identify age-dependent changes in the immune system, examine their functional relevance, and develop therapeutic strategies to delay aging and restore immune function.
Also, the Emory/Georgia Tech Predictive Health Institute is a new and innovative model of health care that focuses on maintaining health rather than treating disease. The institute aims to change the future of healthcare by creating a model of health using new tools of bioscience to identify and measure risks and deviations from health, to develop common processes that promote health maintenance and to restore faulty processes to healthy ones before diseases occur. The institute has funded projects such as "Including Accelerated Biological Aging as Shared Mechanism in Cardiovascular and Brain Disorders" (Vaccarino).
The renowned Emory Vaccine Center has programs in infectious diseases relevant to aging, as well as non-infectious prevention. A Predictive Health Institute project focused on these strengths in the program:" Bridging Immunology, Neuroscience, and Imaging: A New Strategy for Developing Vaccines and Therapeutics Against Neurologic Diseases" (Zola and R. Ahmed)
The Atlanta Clinical and Translational Science Institute is an inter-institutional magnet that concentrates basic, translational, and clinical investigators, community clinicians, professional societies, and industry collaborators in dynamic clinical and translational research projects. Emory has engaged two of its close academic partners in metropolitan Atlanta - Morehouse School of Medicine and Georgia Institute of Technology - to form the Atlanta Clinical and Translational Science Institute (ACTSI) which is funded through a NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA). http://www.actsi.org/
Ongoing research within the Division by Emory faculty focuses on geriatric lower urinary tract disorders, sleep disorders, male hormone, health literacy, environmental barriers in long term care, and aspects of quality of care for the frail elderly in long-term care institutions. Those individuals and their topic areas are listed in the table found here.