Geriatrics Research Labs

Research Description

Dr. Lindquist is Chief of Geriatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and has a strong background in patient-centered health services research, with a focus on successful aging-in-place for older adults. She is the Principal Investigator on multiple PCORI funded awards – 1.) Improving Health Systems Award - to connect older adults to home-based services after they encounter critical advanced life events, such as a falls/ functional loss, 2.) Communication/Dissemination Award - to disseminate patient centered research results through senior patient partners and stakeholders, 3.) Open Science Data Pilot – to publicly share databases for use by other researchers.  Through this PCORI-funded work, the Lindquist lab has established research partnerships with community groups in Illinois, Hawaii, Colorado, Indiana, Texas, Florida, and Ohio.  Dr. Lindquist is the Principal Investigator on an NIH funded study examining older adult cognitive loss and disability, following hospital discharge and its reversibility, as well as an AHRQ funded study assessing how caregivers’ use of EHRs can improve the care of their seniors.  The Lindquist lab published the first research on formal caregivers and the advanced life events that impede successful aging-in-place.  From a mentoring perspective, Dr. Lindquist has a track record with medical students, residents, fellows, and junior faculty – serving as mentor to multiple NIH - K recipients and GEMSTAR recipients.

With her research results, Dr. Lindquist have been successful at dissemination and implementation. Her published research on living on a cruise ship as an alternative to placement in assisted living facilities has been featured on over 200 media channels, with over 150 million views on Facebook and social media.  With that research, she was interviewed by Dutch, Mexican, Italian, and Canadian media and government groups as globally, we seek to find more agreeable solutions for our older populations.  The online tool, PlanYourLifespan.org, which was developed and tested through her PCORI funding has received over 20,000 hits in 42 states, plus South Africa, Canada, and Columbia. With her second PCORI funding award, we are training community partners to be active disseminators of PlanYourLifespan and patient-centered research. Utilizing her MBA from Northwestern Kellogg School of Business, Dr. Lindquist has been effective at marketing directly to the public and multiple different types of end-users for dissemination and implementation of innovative research results. Dr. Lindquist feels strongly that much of our research needs to get into the hands of people in the community who can best use the information.

For more information, visit Dr. Lindquist's faculty profile page.

Publications

View Dr. Lindquist's program publications at PubMed.

Contact

E-Mail: Lindquist Lab

Program Staff

Vanessa Ramirez-Zohfeld, MPH
Research Manager
312-503-3916

Research Description

Work in Dr. McKoy's lab covers a broad range of cancer-related topics unified by one theme: improved outcomes for older individuals living with cancer. Through data-mining they investigate the factors underlying adverse drug reactions in older patients undergoing treatment for cancer. Their goal is to prevent adverse drug events and improve cancer drug safety by identifying the signals and removing the noise.  Additionally, given the myriad physiologic changes of aging and the multiple comorbidities that are attendant to aging, we also investigate how intervening pathologies coalesce in this milieu to drive patient outcomes.  One enduring constant is that even though older patients lose some of their physiologic reserve, each person’s treatment regimen must be individualized. Furthermore, both cancer drug treatment and host environment must be thoughtfully considered. They are therefore intentional in exposing incompatible cancer treatment regimens and in using this information to direct appropriate and more targeted therapies towards older individuals living with cancer. Pharmacoeconomic studies, including cost-benefit, cost-effectiveness, cost-minimization, cost-of-illness, and cost-utility analyses, comparing cancer drug and supportive care products and treatment strategies, are also performed. It should therefore not be surprising that all prongs of our work ultimately intersect and converge at cancer survivorship.

For more information, visit Dr. McKoy's faculty profile page.

Publications

View Dr. McKoy's program publications at PubMed.

Contact

Phone: 312-503-3397

Research Description

Homebound older adults with MCC are more likely than their ambulatory peers to suffer from depression. While over 70% receive pharmacotherapy, most homebound older adults with depression cannot access needed psychological services. Family caregivers commonly play the role of care coordinator, implementing clinician recommendations and encouraging the loved one with depression. Older adults have often been on the fringe of benefitting from technology. However, voice-controlled intelligent personal assistants (VIPAs; e.g. Google Home, Amazon Echo) may be useful to homebound older adults with depression, connecting them to caregivers and primary care; providing functional, cognitive, and social stimulation; and improving anti-depressant medication adherence through reminders. The objective of this pilot study is to design and pilot VIPAs to provide caregivers with skills and tools manage the care of older adults with depression.

Building off prior work with VIPAs where their current real-world use by older adults with MCC and their caregivers was explored, the specific aims of PES-2 are to: (1) Design a VIPA application for improving depression care and communication for homebound older adults, including their caregivers; (2) Assess the feasibility and implementation of VIPA and its impact on clinical and functional outcomes for older adults with depression.

For more information, visit Dr. O'Brien's faculty profile page.

Publications

View Dr. O'Brien's program publications at PubMed.

Contact

Research Description

Primary care has historically been delivered in the outpatient ambulatory setting. However, as our population ages, many older adults reside in long-term care facilities (LTCFs, i.e. nursing homes) where they receive primary care. Almost half of older adults who live in a nursing home are over the age of 85 and many have functional and cognitive impairments such as Alzheimer’s dementia. These multiple comorbidities and the congregate living environment put residents of LTCFs at increased risk from communicable diseases such as influenza and more recently the novel coronavirus (SARS-COV2).

To perform this project we will examine two large national databases including the 1) national healthcare safety network (NHSN) managed by the CDC and 2) nursing home health citations managed by CMS. This proposal will merge two large publically available nursing home databases using the LTCF identification code to determine if current methods for detecting deficiencies in IPC are effective in minimizing the spread of communicable diseases. The findings from this project may provide useful information to how we approach and evaluate infection prevention and control policies in nursing homes, especially for the older adult residents who reside in facilities long-term.

For more information, visit Dr. O'Rowe's faculty profile page.

Publications

View Dr. O'Rowe's program publications at PubMed.