Although she is sad to leave Northwestern, Dr. Scandrett is also excited about the opportunities this move will bring, noting “I will miss my colleagues and patients, but know that the professional and personal relationships I have made at Northwestern will endure. Moving to Pittsburgh will be a new chapter in my life and will afford exciting new opportunities for me and my family.”

Dr. Scandrett will join the Department of Geriatrics at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. She will serve in an exciting new role on the geriatric surgery trauma service, working to infuse geriatric care principles into the treatment of older adults who experience traumatic injuries. Dr. Scandrett will also lead discharge planning and the transition of care process for older adults. This leadership role will allow her to draw on the research she conducted at the Buehler Center that focused on patient needs assessments and medical care preferences. Dr. Scandrett’s work will directly impact the lives of patients and improve the quality of geriatric care at the medical center.

The Buehler Center wishes Dr. Scandrett a fond goodbye and sincerely thanks her for the many contributions she has made to the center, Northwestern University, and the Chicago community.

Psychometrics is a branch of psychology that assigns numerical values to latent, mostly unobservable traits which can then be used for comparison when the data are extracted from assessment tools, thus providing a more accurate patient profile that allows the physician to decide on the best treatment options for a particular patient.

Dr. Chang explained that patients can use electronic devices such as smartphones and computers to enter data in response to items on an assessment tool, such as a questionnaire. The assessment tool contains some validation questions that screen for consistency and legitimacy of responses. The data are then analyzed and summarized and the resulting report can facilitate communication between doctor and patient, allowing them to make more informed treatment choices. Read the full article here.

The Needs Near the End-of-life Screening Tool (NEST) has been translated into Portuguese by Paula Pamplona, a pulmonary specialist in the Department of Pneumology at the Hospital Pulido Valente in Lisbon, Portugal. The NEST tool was designed to systematically identify the whole-person needs of terminally ill patients through a series of 13 questions. In order to ensure the accuracy of the translation, Ms. Pamplona took NEST through a series of translations and a pilot study of 15 patients to account for different regional dialects and to make certain that the information could be understood at a 6th grade reading level. The Buehler Center is gratified to learn that NEST is being utilized in other countries and would like to congratulate Ms. Pamplona on the work she is doing to improve patient care. The EPEC for Veterans Project has received significant media attention recently. In December the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, and the Hartford Courant each ran a story that highlights the work of the EPEC for Veterans Project. The story, entitled “Helping the brave fight their final battle,” was also distributed to the subsidiaries of both the Tribune Company and United Press International, and a number of organizations such as the AARP and Military.com have provided a link to the story. The Military Times network of newspapers also ran a brief story on EPEC for Veterans. You can find the Tribune story here and the Military Times story here.

The Buehler Center was delighted to host this year’s lecture, “There’s No Place like Home: Innovations in Care for Aging Americans”, presented by Thomas Edes, MD, MS, Director of Operations for Geriatrics & Extended Care for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Read more....
This year’s event was held on Thursday, October 20, 2011.

The Buehler Center on Aging, Health & Society was featured in the August 2010 issue of Connections, the faculty-staff newsletter of the Feinberg School of Medicine. The article highlights some of the projects that are housed at the Buehler Center and features interviews with key members of the faculty and staff. The full article can be found here.

This past March, Linda Emanuel, MD, PhD, served as author of an online continuing medical education activity titled End-of-Life Care in the Setting of Cancer: Withdrawing Nutrition and Hydration on Medscape, a web resource that features peer-reviewed journal articles. The clinical update has now been read by over 10,000 physicians and health care professionals. The article has been well received by readers and earned high scores in evaluations. The article can be found here. Those who are not yet members must create a free account in order to access online articles via Medscape.

The Caregiver Champions Program, an ongoing project managed in collaboration with the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, was featured in a recent article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. The article, titled Program Aims to Share Tips, Support, and Resources by Caregivers, discusses the role the program plays in supporting caregivers through both group meetings and reference materials. The article can be found here Congratulations to Denys Lau, PhD, for achieving Honorable Mention in the 2010 Betty J. Cleckley Minority Issues Research Award, sponsored by the American Public Health Association’s Aging and Public Health Section. His work with Dr. Jim Kirby (AHRQ), titled Community and Individual Race/Ethnicity and Home Health Care Use among Elderly Persons in the United States, was recently published in
Health Services Research.

The Buehler Center on Aging Health & Society hosted the 15th annual James E. and Bonnie L. Eckenhoff Lecture and the John & Gwen Smart Symposium at Northwestern Memorial Hospital on September 2, 2010. The lecture was held at the Pritzker Auditorium at the Feinberg Pavilion. This year’s keynote speaker was Baroness Julia Neuberger, DBE. Baroness Neuberger is a rabbi, social reformer, and member of the House of Lords. She is an active proponent of health and aging issues and has undertaken many voluntary and philanthropic roles. She is also the author of several books that focus on topics such as healthcare ethics, Judaism, women, and the care of dying people. Baroness Neuberger presented her lecture titled “Creating Health and Social Care Policies for Elders: Thinking about Aging with Passion” to approximately 125 members of the Northwestern community and the general public. Watch Video | Read Story | View Photos
Dr. Joshua Hauser recently chaired the Navigation and End of Life Task Force at the American Cancer Society’s National Patient Navigation Summit on March 23-24 in Atlanta, GA. The Summit brought together experts in patient navigation who are working to develop common approaches for training navigators and measuring outcomes of navigation skills. Drs. Joshua Hauser and Michael Preodor served as contributing faculty at the debut ‘Become an EPEC-O Canada Trainer’ Conference March 19-20. The conference was hosted by the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer in Toronto, Canada.

Congratulations to Dr. Chih-Hung Chang for being named a 2009 exceptional reviewer for the journal Medical Care. Top reviewers were chosen on the basis of quality, timeliness, and number of reviews performed. The list of top peer reviewers will be published in the June 2010 issue of Medical Care.

Dr. Linda Emanuel, Director of the Buehler Center, will teach a 5-week, cross-disciplinary course offered jointly by the Feinberg School of Medicine and Kellogg School of Management in the Spring 2010 quarter. The course, titled “Health Care: Business, Professional and Public Perspectives,” will use weekly themes to explore varied approaches to common health care quandaries. More information, including a syllabus, can be found here The EPEC-Emergency Medicine Project will present the abstract “Impact of The Education in Palliative and End of Life Care Project on Emergency Medicine Education and Practice” on March 4, 2010 at the Annual Assembly of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine.  The results of this paper show that trainers who complete the EPEC-EM conference report a substantial perceived impact on their knowledge and skills. Congratulations to Dr. Joshua Hauser who received the distinguished Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Drs. Chih-Hung Chang and Denys Lau have been selected to participate in an intensive course this January and February titled “Management Skills for Innovative University Leaders.”  In its third year, this interdisciplinary course is run by the McCormick School of Engineering, the Feinberg School of Medicine, and the Kellogg School of Management in order to foster leadership and entrepreneurial skills in faculty.  Dr. Chang’s project Novel Pain Assessment and Intervention Network (NoPAIN) was recently showcased in a poster presentation at an NIH meeting in Bethesda, Maryland entitled, "Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research: Methodological and Technological Innovation in the Behavioral and Social Sciences." Jeanne Martinez, an EPEC Master Facilitator and consultant for the EPEC-Caregiver project, and her husband John Segreti were featured performers at the recent United Way Kick off Event “NMH’s Got Talent!” on September 23rd at Northwestern Memorial Hospital (NMH). Jeanne and her husband danced the Cha Cha at the event, which was the first in series of fundraisers hosted by NMH for the 2009 United Way Campaign.

Minimize