Who We Are

GEAR 1.1 - Leadership

Ula Hwang, MD, MPH (Research Core Lead) – Contact PI

Professor of Emergency Medicine and Population Health |Medical Director of Geriatric Emergency Medicine | New York University Grossman School of Medicine

Ula Hwang is a Professor of Emergency Medicine and Population Health and Medical Director of Geriatric Emergency Medicine at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, with an adjunct appointment at Yale School of Medicine. She is also a core investigator at the GRECC (Geriatrics Research, Education and Clinical Center) at the James J. Peters Bronx VAMC. She is the co-PI of the Geriatric ED Collaborative (GEDC), a national implementation program supported by the John A. Hartford Foundation and the West Health Institute to educate, implement, and evaluate geriatric emergency care and the PI of the National Institute on Aging funded Geriatric Emergency care Applied Research (GEAR) Network, and MPI of GEAR 2.0 – Advancing Dementia Care.

ula.hwang@nyulangone.org

Daniella Meeker, PhD – MPI

Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics & Data Science | Yale School of Medicine | Chief Research Information Officer | Yale New Haven Health System

Daniella Meeker is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics & Data Science at Yale School of Medicine and Chief Research Information Officer at Yale New Haven Health System. Her research program is centered on the design, evaluation, and responsible deployment of data-driven systems that improve healthcare delivery at scale. Across her career, she has pursued a coherent scientific trajectory that has evolved from behavioral intervention trials to informatics infrastructure, federated data platforms, and, most recently, AI-enabled learning health systems governed by strong ethical and institutional safeguards.

daniella.meeker@yale.edu

R. Andrew Taylor, MD, MHS (Data Core Lead)

Professor of Emergency Medicine | Vice Chair of Research and Innovation | University of Virginia School of Medicine

R. Andrew Taylor is a Professor of Emergency Medicine and Vice Chair of Research and Innovation at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. A clinical informatics expert, his research integrates artificial intelligence with real-world healthcare delivery through cross-disciplinary collaboration. His goal is to drive AI innovation that promotes equity and delivers lasting impact across healthcare settings.

KQC5MK@uvahealth.org

Chris Carpenter, MD, MSc (Emergency Medicine Dissemination & Implementation Core Lead)

Professor of Emergency Medicine | Vice Chair of Implementation & Innovation | Mayo Clinic Rochester

Chris Carpenter is dual-trained in Emergency Medicine and Internal Medicine and Professor of Emergency Medicine at Mayo Clinic-Rochester. He serves on the American College of Emergency Physicians Clinical Policy Committee and leads the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Guidelines for Reasonable & Appropriate Care in the Emergency Department. His research interests include diagnostics, dementia, falls prevention, and implementation science. He is Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Academic Emergency Medicine, and Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society and the ACP Journal Club of Annals of Internal Medicine. He co-led the collaboration to develop the American College of Emergency Physician/American Geriatrics Society Geriatric Emergency Department Guidelines as well as the EQUATOR Network’s Standards for Reporting of Implementation Research (StaRI) reporting guidelines.

carpenter.christopher@mayo.edu

Twitter: @GeriatricEDNews

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=mDjG2hwAAAAJ&hl=en&inst=12058184521150304743

Nicki Hastings, MD (Geriatrics Dissemination & Implementation Core Lead)

Professor of Medicine & Population Health Sciences; Director, Center of Innovation to Accelerate Discovery & Practice Transformation (ADAPT) Duke University School of Medicine & Durham VA Health Care System

S. Nicole (Nicki) Hastings is a geriatrician and Director of Durham VA’s Health Services Research Center of Innovation ADAPT. She leads a multi-study VA QUERI program on implementing and evaluating clinical programs to help older adults maintain functional independence and quality of life.

susan.hastings@duke.edu

William Hung, MD, MPH (Geriatrics Measurement Core Lead)

Professor of Geriatrics & Palliative Medicine | Mount Sinai

William Hung is a Professor of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine. He received his MD from the Albert Einstein School of Medicine before completing his residency at Johns Hopkin Bayview and a Fellowship in Geriatrics at Mount Sinai Hospital. He is also a core investigator at the Geriatrics Research, Education and Clinical Center (GRECC) at the James J. Peters VAMC. His research focuses on geriatrics models of care that include care coordination with rural health, acute inpatient care programs, and hospitalization at home integration.

william.hung@mssm.edu

Ling Han, MD, PhD, MS (Longitudinal Aging Approach & Biostats Core Lead)

Senior Research Scientist (Geriatrics) | Yale School of Medicine

Dr. Han is a Senior Research Scientist and biostatistician with Yale Department of Internal Medicine/Geriatrics and Program on Aging. His main research interests included longitudinal modeling of cognitive and functional decline of older persons, quasi-experimental design and analyses of medical interventions, risk assessment for anticholinergic drug burden and polypharmacy, and multi-level modeling of individual and contextual determinants of health outcomes. His research achievements included two WHO awards for Chinese Young Professionals, the development of common ARC (Annual Rate of Change) for Alzheimer’s disease progression, the development of clinician rated anticholinergic score (CR-ACHS) for assessing cumulative anticholinergic drug burden on cognitive risk, and more than 100 peer reviewed research publications as the primary or a coauthor.

ling.han@yale.edu

Xi Chen, PhD (Economics Aging Approach & Biostats Core Lead)

Associate Professor of Public Health (Health Policy) and Associate Professor at Institution for Social and Policy Studies | Yale School of Public Health

Xi Chen, Ph.D., is an associate professor of Public Health (Health Policy) and Economics at Yale University. He is a faculty fellow at the Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center, and Yale Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. He co-organizes Yale Population Studies Workshop. He serves as an Editor at the Journal of Population Economics, a consultant at the World Bank, Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and NIH’s Butler-Williams Scholar and PEPPER Scholar. His research endeavors mainly involve: (1) Economics of cognitive aging and Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD); (2) Aging-related policy evaluations; (3) Life course environments and aging well; (4) AI for population health; and (5) Global clinical trials for ADRD and other chronic conditions.

xi.chen@yale.edu

Raymond Kang, MA (Methodology Approach & Biostats Core Lead)

Team Leader Database, Center for Community Health | Northwestern University

Raymond Kang is a health services researcher in the Center for Community Health at Northwestern University. His background is in economics, and he specializes in outcomes research and evaluation using non-randomized design techniques with large administrative databases. He has served as lead analyst/statistician on projects such as the evaluation of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF) Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) Program, a study on the cost effectiveness of the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP), part of the Centers for Disease Control’s Natural Experiments in Translation for Diabetes (NEXT-D), and a project which uses claims data from a large national insurer to answer timely questions from many different clinical areas.

raymond-kang@northwestern.edu

GEAR 1.0 Grantees

Scott Dresden, MD, MS

Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine | Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Dr. Dresden was awarded a Geriatric Emergency Care Applied Research (1.0) Network Grant. He will work on his project titled, “Identifying Older Adults with Delirium in the Emergency Department: Risk Factors and Phenotypes” at Northwestern University.

Cameron Gettel, MD, MHS

Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine | Yale University School of Medicine

Dr. Gettel was awarded a Geriatric Emergency Care Applied Research (1.0) Network Grant. He will work on his project titled, “A health equity assessment of What Matters to older adults and patient-perceived success of ED care Transitions” at Yale University.

Rachel Skains, MD, MSPH

Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine | University of Alabama Heersink School of Medicine

Dr. Skains was awarded a Geriatric Emergency Care Applied Research (1.0) Network Grant. She will work on her project titled, “Impact of Potentially Inappropriate Medications Prescribed at Emergency Department Discharge on Geriatric Patient-Level Outcomes” at the University of Alabama.