Meet the AGEM Leaders!

President

The Ohio State University

Dr. Buck is an Assistant Professor at Ohio State University and Director of the Level 1 Geriatric ED. She received her medical degree from the University of Virginia and completed EM residency and a Research Fellowship at Ohio State University. She is a current NIA Beeson K76 award recipient. Her research focus is improving diagnostic accuracy in older adult emergency department patients with current work on pneumonia. She has been involved in geriatric emergency medicine and AGEM since she was an undergraduate student.

• Academic interest: diagnostic accuracy, infectious disease (pneumonia) in older adults
• Current or prior funding: GEMSSTAR R03, BEESON K76

President-Elect

Past President

University of Colorado, Denver

Dr. Goldberg is a board-certified emergency physician and Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine. She completed her internship, residency, and chief residency at Brown University. She is a graduate of the post-doctoral research fellowship at the Center of Gerontology and Healthcare Research at Brown University (AHRQ T32) and Masters of Epidemiology (ScM) program.

Her research interests lie at the intersection of aging and emergency medicine. She has lead state wide and national initiatives to improve population health funded by the National Institutes of Health, foundations, professional societies, and payors. As the principal investigator of a National Institutes of Health-funded fall prevention study for older adults in the emergency department (GAPcare-the Geriatric Acute and Post-Acute Fall Prevention Intervention), she developed and tested a multidisciplinary intervention that significantly reduced fall-related ED visits for older adults. For GAPcare, she brought together a team of pharmacists and physical therapists to provide medication therapy management and fall risk assessments to older adults seeking emergency care after a fall. She is currently funded by a Paul B. Beeson Emerging Leaders Career Development Award in Aging (National Institutes of Health, NIA K76) to evaluate whether the Apple Watch can enhance fall outcome assessment and linkage as part of the GAPcare intervention. She is the co-creator of MyCovidRisk.app, a risk assessment and mitigation tool that was used over 1 Million times prior to vaccination being available.

Dr. Goldberg is passionate about expanding the physician scientist pipeline, and has mentored many faculty, fellows, residents, and students. She was the inaugural Associate Director of the Accelerated MPH for Clinicians program at the Brown School of Public Health.

• Academic interest: geriatric fall prevention, digital health
• Current or prior funding: GEMSSTAR R03, BEESON K76

Secretary

Bellevue Hospital Center and Clinical Faculty

I am originally from Louisville, KY, graduated from Emory University in Atlanta, GA with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and Spanish, and received my Doctorate of Medicine from University of Louisville in Louisville, KY. I completed my combined Emergency Medicine and Internal Medicine residency at the State University of New York Downstate Health Sciences University (SUNY DHSU) and Kings County Hospital Center (KCHC) in Brooklyn, NY. I completed my Geriatric Emergency Medicine (GEM) Fellowship at Weill Cornell/New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. I am currently an Attending Physician at Bellevue Hospital Center and Clinical Faculty in the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Emergency Medicine at NYU Langone Hospitals in New York City.

I have been a member of SAEM and AGEM for three years, and have particularly enjoyed working with the AGEM Outreach Committee. In December 2020 I co-organized and co-hosted a Leaders in GEM virtual event with the aim of generating early interest in GEM amongst medical students and residents and helping to connect them with mentors who have been successful in the field. I served on the AGEM Executive Committee as a Member At Large. I am honored to be Treasurer for AGEM this year.

Between taking care of patients in both a public inner-city Level 1 Trauma Center and Tertiary care center in residency and having an octogenarian father and nonagenarian grandmother who I have watched navigate the sometimes treacherous walls of an Emergency Department from the lens of a patient their age, I grew interested in how we can best optimize the care of older adults in the ED. In addition, my interest areas lie in using novel tools to improve communication with older adults, screening for geriatric depression in older adults who come into the Emergency Department, decreasing loneliness and social isolation in this population, health disparities in geriatric patients, physician wellness, streamlining transitions of care, geriatric ED accreditation best care practices, as well as enhancing diversity in the field of Geriatric Emergency Medicine.

Treasurer

The Mayo Clinic

I have a Master’s in Clinical Research and Translational Sciences and completed a 3-year post-doctoral program on Healthcare Delivery dedicated to secondary data analysis, research methodology, and evidence-based medicine as a Kern Scholar at the Mayo Clinic Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery. Over my career, I have dedicated a significant effort toward clinical research, evidence-based medicine, patient centered care, neurological emergencies, geriatric medicine, and more recently implementation through National clinical guidelines development.

• Affiliation: Professor of Emergency Medicine; of Health Sciences Research, Division of Health Care Policy and Research; and of Medicine, Division of Community Internal Medicine, Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, Section of Geriatric Medicine at Mayo Clinic
• Academic Interests and current funding: Over my career I have conducted multiple observational and interventional studies. I am the site-principal investigator for the R18 AHRQ funded study IDEA-LL: Improving Diagnosis in Emergency and Acute Care: A Learning Laboratory; PI for REDEEM: REcognizing DElirium in Emergency Medicine to prospectively study delirium in the Emergency Department; site-PI for the U24 Network for Emergency Care Clinical Trials: Strategies to Innovate EmeRgENcy Care Clinical Trials Network (SIREN); site co-PI for NIH StrokeNet, a NINDS funded multicenter network for the study of neurological diseases; site-PI for the UG3/UH3 study PRIM-ER: Primary Palliative Care for Emergency Medicine; and Co-I for the U01 Center for Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation (CERSI) program, a collaboration between the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and academic institutions.

Member-at-Large

Baylor College of Medicine

Anita Chary, MD PhD is a medical anthropologist and emergency physician. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, received her medical and doctoral degrees (MD PhD, Anthropology) from Washington University in St. Louis, and served as chief resident of the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency. She currently works at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. Broadly, her research focuses on social determinants of health and care of vulnerable populations. Her geriatrics research concerns emergency care of older adults with cognitive impairment and is funded by an NIA (GEMSSTAR) award and the Geriatric Emergency care Applied Research (GEAR) Network. Dr. Chary was previously an elected resident executive committee member of AGEM and currently serves as the Research Committee Chair of SAEM Academy of Diversity & Inclusion in Emergency Medicine. In this role, she bridges the academies to foster initiatives and collaborative research that address ageism/ableism in clinical care and improving inclusion of minoritized older adults in emergency medicine research. Dr. Chary also conducts global health research related to child nutrition/development, chronic disease management, and care innovations in rural Indigenous communities in Guatemala. 

Member-at-Large

Yale University School of Medicine

Cameron Gettel, MD, MHS is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine, a Clinical Investigator at the Yale Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, and the Co-Director of the Yale Emergency Scholars (YES) Fellowship. Dr. Gettel aims to advance the understanding of emergency department care transitions in the growing geriatric population through the identification and development of patient- and caregiver-reported outcome measures and then to design, implement, and validate innovative care transition strategies and interventions to improve clinical outcomes. At CORE, Dr. Gettel leads work funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to develop the next generation of performance measures across multiple care settings. 

Dr. Gettel earned his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from Elizabethtown College and his Doctor of Medicine from the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine. He completed Emergency Medicine residency at Brown University, where he served as chief resident, and the National Clinician Scholars Program at Yale University. 

• Academic interest: care transitions, patient-reported outcome measurement, care partners of persons living with cognitive impairment
• Current or prior funding: NIA GEMSSTAR R03, NIA IMPACT Collaboratory, Alzheimer's Association, Yale OAIC Pepper Center, GEAR Pilot, EMF

Member-At-Large

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine (DEM) at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) with a joint faculty appointment at the Birmingham Veterans Affairs Medical Center (BVAMC). I am an early-stage investigator focused on improving the acute care of older adults through patient-centered outcomes research, specifically on delirium and medication safety. I was awarded the AHRQ NRSA T32 Postdoctoral Scholar Fellowship (2020-2022), in addition to funding through the UAB Integrative Center for Aging Research (ICAR) to examine the risk of delirium with opioid use among older adults in the ED and validate the nursing delirium screening scale (NuDESC) in the ED. Further, I completed the UAB Geriatric Scholar Interprofessional Program from 2019-2021 and attended the 2021 Network for Investigation of Delirium: Unifying Scientists (NIDUS) Bootcamp that both provided interdisciplinary geriatric educational sessions and specialty training in delirium. I have recently been awarded two NIA awards: Grants for Early Medical/Surgical Specialists' Transition to Aging Research (GEMSSTAR) R03 (2023-2025) to evaluate the risk factors and time course of incident delirium among older adults in the ED and Exploratory/ Developmental Grant R21 (2023-2025) for comprehensive assessment of delirium risk due to medications. Furthermore, I am an ED physician champion for the UAB – Highlands and BVAMC Geriatric ED Committees, which received Level 1 (2021) and Level 3 (2023) accreditations respectively, served as Fellow board member for the Geriatric EM Section of ACEP (2021-2023) and currently Chair of the AGEM Grants & Awards Subcommittee (2023-Present). Finally, I was awarded the 2023 SAEM AGEM Early Career Achievement Award, in addition to the UAB DEM Outstanding Researcher of the Year 2023.

Member-At-Large

Resident Representative

Alameda Health System, Highland Hospital

Lily Leitner Berrin, MD is a second year emergency medicine resident at Highland Hospital, in Oakland, California. She completed her medical degree at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 2022. Dr. Berrin is currently working on improving the care for older patients in the Emergency Department at Highland Hospital, the primary trauma center and county hospital for Alameda County. She is working with the nursing and trauma teams to improve care around falls. Dr. Berrin has been involved with AGEM since medical school, previously serving as the Medical Student Representative on the Executive Board and continues to serve on the Membership and Outreach Committee.

• Academic interest: Geriatrics, geriatric trauma, falls, geriatric medical education

Medical Student Member