For Immediate Release

Washington, D.C., July 5, 2001-The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), in collaboration with the John A. Hartford Foundation in New York City, has awarded 20 grants to U.S. medical schools to enhance their gerontology and geriatric curricula. This is the second phase of a grant first awarded to the AAMC in 1999; with the implementation of this phase, the Hartford awards to the AAMC totals $4.8 million and includes 40 medical schools.

Each institution will receive up to $50,000 a year, totaling $100,000 over the course of the two-year grant. Each school is expected to offer a fully integrated curriculum spanning the four years of undergraduate medical school training. The institutions will provide medical students with the necessary skills to deliver high quality, compassionate care to the nation's burgeoning elderly population, and to effectively handle the complex issues associated with end-of-life care.

One example is at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, where geriatrics content will be integrated into the standardized patient and human patient simulation programs. Particularly innovative is the school's inclusion of a "standardized caregiver," used to simulate a typical hospital situation of a seriously ill older patient in crisis. The student will interact with the standardized caregiver to discuss treatment preferences, discontinuing curative care, and giving bad news.

At the Meharry Medical College School of Medicine, targeted geriatrics learning experiences occur during each year of medical school to systematically build students' knowledge about aging and geriatric medicine. During the internal medicine clerkship in the third year, the focus is on holistic health, which includes the psycho/social aspects of aging, as well as nutrition and dentistry. The Hartford grant complements Meharry's mission to serve the emerging needs of an older and more ethnically diverse population. Similarly, the University of New Mexico School of Medicine is using the Hartford grant to focus on Native American and Hispanic populations in their program of ethnogeriatrics.

The AAMC received 45 proposals from interested institutions, which were evaluated by geriatrics and medical education experts. Materials produced by the grantees will be disseminated to U.S. and Canadian medical schools during the AAMC's Annual Meeting, as well as through academic publications, workshops, poster sessions, and other professional meetings. The final year of the grant program will feature a conference, sponsored by the AAMC and Hartford, about geriatrics and gerontology in medical education.

AAMC 2001 Hartford Grant Award Recipients

1. University of Alabama School of Medicine
2. Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University
3. University of California, Irvine, College of Medicine
4. University of Cincinnati College of Medicine
5. Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons
6. Duke University School of Medicine
7. Georgetown University School of Medicine
8. Indiana University School of Medicine
9. Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University
10. Louisiana State University School of Medicine in Shreveport
11. University of Louisville School of Medicine
12. University of Massachusetts Medical School
13. Meharry Medical College School of Medicine
14. University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine
15. University of New Mexico School of Medicine
16. University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
17. St. Louis University School of Medicine
18. State University of New York Upstate Medical University College of Medicine
19. University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio
20. Wayne State University School of Medicine

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The Association of American Medical Colleges represents the 125 accredited U.S. medical schools; the 16 accredited Canadian medical schools; some 400 major teaching hospitals, including 74 Veterans Administration medical centers; 91 academic and professional societies representing over 100,000 faculty members; and the nation's 67,000 medical students and 102,000 residents. The John A. Hartford Foundation is a private philanthropy established in 1929 by John A. Hartford. Mr. Hartford and his brother, George L. Hartford, both former chief executives of The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, left the bulk of their estates to the Foundation upon their deaths in the 1950s. Since 1979, the Foundation has focused its support on improving the organization and financing of health care and assisting the health care system to accommodate the nation's aging population. Before 1979, the Foundation primarily supported clinically-oriented biomedical research projects.

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