The curriculum during a second year of fellowship program is orientated towards classes in quantitative analysis such as Epidemiology, Statistics, and Research Methodologies. Under the guidance of a geriatric advisor, the fellow will begin to develop a research project. Considerable resources at our institution are available to develop collaborative research between Geriatric Medicine and other health care fields.

These resources include:

• Cancer Research Center
• Center for Clinical Medical Ethics
• Center for Health Administration and Policy Studies
• Clinical Nutrition Research Unit
• Committee on Clinical Pharmacology
• Diabetes Research and Training Center
• Harris School of Public Policy
• School of Social Service Administration

Current Clinical investigations include:

• Palliative Excellence in Alzheimer Care Efforts (PEACE) implements and tests 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.
• Determine impact of proposed regulations on the conduct of research with cognitively impaired research subjects.
• Views of state Attorneys General on U.S. state laws governing research with cognitively impaired subjects.
• Change in elderly cognitive function due to adjuvant chemotherapy.
• Impact of hospitalist care within Geriatrics medicine service.
• Understanding the role of anxiety in medical decision-making related prostate cancer.
• The role of risk attitudes in elderly patient’s fear of falling.