The Section of Geriatrics and its collaborators tackle some of the most important and challenging types of research, including conducting important studies involving patients with impaired decision-making capacity, patients with multiple and complex medical conditions, and patients receiving care in a variety of settings. Our researchers even study ways in which research on older adults can be improved, such as with the work on informed consent for dementia research and investigations into the placebo effect in medication trials for urinary incontinence. Research within the Section of Geriatrics has been supported by essentially all of the major institutes and foundations funding aging-related research in the United States, including the National Institute on Aging (NIA), the John A. Hartford Foundation, the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, the Alzheimer’s Association, the Retirement Research Foundation, and the Greenwall Foundation.

Just a partial list of some of the clinical research in geriatrics includes:

• Palliative Excellence in Alzheimer Care Efforts (PEACE) Program: developed and studied the feasibility of a palliative care program for patients with dementia.
• Dementia Research: Informed, Proxy and Advance Consent (DRIPAC) focuses on the ethics of decision making for research with dementia subjects.
• Developing linguistics-based approaches to evaluating decision-making capacity in patients with dementia.
• Measuring quality of life in patients with urinary incontinence.
• The role of explanatory style in outcomes of incontinence treatment.
• Diabetes in geriatric populations: special considerations.
• Studying the addition of geriatrics assessment approaches to cancer care.
• Change in elderly cognitive function due to adjuvant chemotherapy for cancer.
• The role of anxiety in clinical decision-making by older adults.
• Elder abuse and self-neglect.
• Impact of hospitalists on the inpatient care of older adults.