Our mission is to build a strong health care workforce in Idaho, for Idaho.
Our state remains in a health care worker crisis. We rank 50th out of 50 in active physicians per capita. We must keep training physicians and health care professionals in the state of Idaho. That begins here.
This year, we will welcome the first cohorts of Idaho’s first Master of Science in Gerontology and the world’s first Doctor of Anatomical Sciences. We have accomplished so much over the past year, and I know that this year will bring even greater things.
We will continue to focus on rural health care, making sure our students are well-prepared to serve in rural communities. That is largely in thanks to our skilled faculty, who have trained more than 900 physicians over the past 52 years and are devoted to improving access to health care for Idahoans.
As we embark on this journey, we invite you to join us in celebrating the students of the past, present and future who have chosen and will choose to earn their education from us.
Go Vandals!
Jeff Seegmiller, Ed.D., LAT, ATC
Regional Dean and Director, Idaho WWAMI Medical Education Program, School of Health and Medical Professions
THE LATEST
FROM THE SCHOOL OF HEALTH AND MEDICAL PROFESSIONS
Western Regional Medical Conference
This year, 19 Idaho WWAMI students headed to Carmel, CA for the Western Medical Research Conference. To attend, each student submitted an abstract that will be published in the Journal of Internal Medicine. They presented topics ranging from Gastroenterology to Surgery and Neonatology.
Breaking New Ground
Our building expansion has officially begun and construction is under way. We couldn’t have done this without the generous support of our donors. This expansion is an exciting step for medical education at University of Idaho. Thank you to Flad Architects for the vision and design of this building and to all the teams on site working everyday to build the expansion.
Vandal Health Clinic
The Vandal Health Clinic reopened in the New Year. This time as a teaching clinic where Idaho WWAMI medical students and other health professions students will have the opportunity to gain clinical experience under the supervision of full-time clinical physician faculty within the WWAMI program, while providing medical care to the U of I student population.
Doc for a Day
In December, North Idaho Area Health Education Center (NI-AHEC) hosted 45 middle and high school students who came together to experience a hands-on, day in the life of a doctor. They worked through different specialties like internal medicine, family medicine and emergency medicine. Here’s to the future physicians of Idaho!
Applications Open for New SHAMP Programs
Applications for our new School of Health and Medical Professions’ programs are open! We can’t wait to welcome future health leaders into the Vandal community and see their impact in Idaho and beyond.
White Coat Ceremony
In September, the first-year class of E24’s were given their White Coats. Dr. Jacques Bouchard, Clinical Assistant Professor, shared four powerful reminders—or “bumper stickers”—for our new students to carry with them:
1. As Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau said, “To cure sometimes, to relieve often, to comfort always.”
2. A note to loved ones: During the grueling years ahead, particularly between 6 AM and 10 AM in clinical rotations, your student will be deeply committed to their work. So, don’t call. Text. They may miss out on family moments, but they are dedicating themselves to a profession that never truly clocks out.
3. Let the white coat be a beacon that says, “I am no longer the most important person in my life; the person before me is.”
4. Finally, express gratitude to those who have made you their priority, helping you reach this milestone.
PAYING IT FORWARD
Stephen Lloyd-Davies, a retired physician and Idaho WWAMI graduate, has spent decades in medicine, helping rural communities and connecting with the next generation of doctors. He attended Idaho WWAMI in the 1980’s as part of the E82 class, graduated in 1986, finished a residency in Family Practice, became board-certified in that specialty and went on to practice family medicine and urgent care. Post-residency, he worked in Twin Falls and North Idaho before landing in Spokane.
“I also did some locums work, which is where you work in towns that are chronically short of doctors,” said Dr. Lloyd-Davies. “That was very rewarding. It could be quite challenging because I’d end up being the only doctor in a 21-bed hospital, outpatient clinic and small ER. I took calls, triaged and stabilized the ill and injured, and admitted and discharged patients. It was hard but very satisfying and I knew I provided care that people desperately needed.”
E24 Shelem Justesen and Dr. Stephen Lloyd-Davies at the 2024 Scholarship Reception.
Dr. Lloyd-Davies retired in 2016, one year after receiving his Parkinson’s disease diagnosis.
Parkinson’s is a progressive brain disorder that causes uncontrollable movements such as shaking and loss of coordination.
Now, the doctor is giving back to his old medical school, guest lecturing and providing scholarships for Idaho’s future physicians.
Beyond guest lecturing, Lloyd-Davies also donates money each year to provide scholarships for Idaho WWAMI medical students.
“My folks helped me out with some zero interest loans, and I always wanted to help other people get through this more easily,” Lloyd-Davies said. “I always appreciated that my folks were there for me during some tough times when I hit the bottom of the funding barrel. I wanted to pay it forward and make it easier for future generations.”
Currently, his generosity assists three medical students on their journeys to become physicians.
Idaho WWAMI is committed to helping solve the health care worker shortage in Idaho. That mission would not be possible without the generosity of public organizations or citizens like Dr. Lloyd-Davies.
“I had mentioned on a visit down here, ‘if you ever want to let the students examine a Parkinson’s patient so they can see what the signs and symptoms look like, I’d be happy to volunteer,’” he said. “And they contacted me.”
He meshes his lived experience of the disease with the professors’ lectures, sharing tidbits about living with Parkinson’s with the students and different tricks that make it easier.
“I go over stuff anywhere from some of the history of Parkinson’s to the medicines and some of the cutting edge research,” he said. “I try to infuse it with some of my personal experiences with the medicines and how to take them and how not to take them. I review side effects, and interactions with food and other medications. I talk about the progression of Parkinson’s and other diseases that look like it, but aren’t it, and how to differentiate them.”
STRIKING OUT INJURIES
Abaseball landed with a thud into the 12-year-old boy’s glove. He pitched it back across the gym, landing it squarely in his partner’s glove.
The 12-year-old had signed up to be a participant in Idaho WWAMI Clinical Assistant Professor Nickolai Martonick’s pitching study.
The study focused on youth pitchers, exploring factors that might have been contributing to the recent increase of injuries in high school pitchers.
Each young pitcher has sensors taped to their neck, hands, arms, legs and feet. These sensors are designed to track the movement of each extremity, reflecting that movement in real time through a 3D computer program.
“What we want to do is see what range of motion the pitchers have, see if we can improve it and then whether it improved the pitching mechanics,” Martonick said.
Over the summer, Martonick opened his lab to WWAMI’s required summer research experience,
inviting students from across the WWAMI region to work with him on his research.
Two Alaska WWAMI students — Alyssa Randall and John Gregory — jumped on the opportunity, each taking on a specific portion of the project, with an emphasis on pitching velocity and injury prevention.
Randall focused on whether changing the pitcher’s range of motion would affect their pitching velocity.
“I pitched in college and had three hip surgeries, from pitching from a super young age and only playing one sport,” she said. “I saw the project and I was like, ‘Oh my god, I can help kids not end up like me. That would be so cool.’”
Gregory was studying if the implementation of a total motion release (TMR) focused stretching routine — a set of stretches designed to reduce pain and tightness in the muscle by exercising the opposite muscle — would change the active range of motion in the pitchers.
Alaska WWAMI student John Gregory and study participant
“We’re recording their motions. We use the sensors to see how far their range of motion is at the beginning of the study versus adding an intervention, the intervention being the TMR stretching routine,” Gregory said. “We’re going to compare that to a traditional stretching routine.”
The goal of the study is for pitchers to have an increased range of motion throughout the body.
Gregory said that, if effective, the TMR stretching routine could then be implemented into sports teams as something that could increase range of motion, prevent injuries and hopefully show an increase in ball velocity.
“What the research is already saying is that pitchers need to work on their range of motion,” Martonick said. “So, developing enough flexibility to perform the proper pitching mechanics.”
The participating pitchers would be given feedback on their pitching form and mechanics, something that could directly impact them as they begin to play high school sports.
STUDYING MEDICINE
WITH A HUMAN PERSPECTIVE
IDAHO WWAMI’S RURAL UNDERSERVED OPPORTUNITIES PROGRAM CONNECTS STUDENTS WITH SMALL COMMUNITIES
By Danae Lenz University of Idaho
Printed in Idaho Falls Magazine
Patient intake, treating runny noses, removing moles, even delivering babies — it’s all on the table this summer for Idaho WWAMI students participating in the medical school’s Rural Underserved Opportunities Program (RUOP).
RUOP participants, who have just finished their first year of medical school at University of Idaho, disperse across the state for 4 weeks of hands-on training and a taste of small-town medicine.
Sydney Mena of Idaho Falls and Kaden Lee of Nampa knew what they signed up for, but when they arrived in Rexburg in eastern Idaho this summer, they had no idea just how immersive the RUOP program would be.
“Oh my gosh, it’s been fantastic,” said Mena, who is studying under Dr. Jacob Curtis at Grand Peaks Medical. “It’s only been two days, but it’s been the best clinical experience of medical school so far. It feels like I’m finally practicing medicine, which is a fantastic change.”
On her second day, Dr. Curtis had her help deliver a baby, which she said was “the experience of a lifetime for me.”
“I was joking with Dr. Curtis afterward and was like, ‘Wow, you pulled me in for this delivery and let me help deliver a baby on Day 2. What do you have in store for me for the rest of the 4 weeks?’” Mena said.
After only a couple days on the job, Lee had also already seen lots of patients and helped with procedures like biopsies, colonoscopies and repairing lacerations.
“It’s a great opportunity for me to establish some foundations in things that I will use throughout my medical education,” said Lee, who is under the tutelage of Dr. Michael Packer at Madison Memorial Hospital. “For example, most family medicine physicians don’t do surgery, but if I do biopsies and repair simple lacerations, that’s a transferable skill that will go into my surgery residency.”
WWAMI graduates, more than a fifth of them, the most of any medical field, specialized in family medicine.
Dr. Curtis, who is a family medicine physician and OB/GYN, said RUOP offers students a chance early in their education to envision a rural career.
“It gives them a little taste of light at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “Like a lot of careers, to become a physician, it is a lot of hard work, a lot of 80-hour weeks and a lot of sacrifice, and so it’s nice to have experiences like this, where you can get a taste of what life might be like when you’re a physician.”
When it comes to practicing medicine in a rural setting, one of the challenges is that health care providers might not have everything they need at their fingertips, so they must learn to think on their feet.
“It creates a different mindset around medicine when you don’t always have the specialist who you need to call. It cultivates an attitude of needing to continue to learn and grow,” Lee said. “That’s a really important skill to have — being able to figure things out.”
WWAMI’s goals with RUOP are twofold: to provide students with early exposure to the challenges and rewards of working with rural and underserved communities, and to encourage students to consider a future in rural and underserved community medicine.
Data show that Idaho WWAMI is succeeding in keeping more doctors in the state. To date, more than 900 physicians have been trained in Idaho WWAMI and 51% of its graduates return to practice in Idaho, well above the national average of 39% of students returning to the state in which they went to medical school. Of those Idaho
On the other hand, one of the benefits Mena has seen of a small-town practice is the ability of doctors to be able to see their patients from cradle to grave — and to get to know people outside of work as well.
“It’s amazing to me that Dr. Curtis can deliver a patient’s baby, and they’re still his patient, and their child is now his new patient, and he gets to see that child grow up,” she said. “He’s also such a force in the community. He really gets to know his patients well. That kind of primary care is unique to a small rural town, like, ‘Oh yeah, I know you, and I took care of your parents, and
I see you at church, and I see you at school, and I see you at Little League.’ It’s just amazing to see what community you can build in a rural doctor’s office.”
Given Idaho’s major physician shortage, especially in rural areas, Dr. Curtis, who has participated in RUOP before, said one of the major benefits of the program is the connections students build in the small communities they’re serving.
“Hopefully they make that connection with a patient, see the variety of what we could do in the rural setting, and most of all, see the need there to perhaps persuade or inspire them to pursue such a career path,” Curtis said. “If they don’t, at least it gives them appreciation and understanding of what our care providers face and experience.”
Through RUOP, not only do students get exposure to daily life in a small-town health system, but the program is also a boon for doctors, as young people bring fresh ideas and new energy.
“I’ve been blessed that I haven’t really struggled with burnout in my 20-year career, but I think a lot of that is taking on medical students,” Curtis said. “You see their energy, their enthusiasm, their excitement. It’s an opportunity to give back and feel the enthusiasm of students. And it also keeps me sharp. If you’re going to teach, you want to be on the top of your game, too.”
Dr. Curtis said one of the things he hopes his mentees learn through their RUOP experience is how to humanize patients.
“We’ll see people having bad days and people
who go through difficult things, and they realize that we’re not just treating symptoms. We’re treating patients. We’re treating the mind, the body, the spirit — it’s all interconnected,” Curtis said. That lesson is certainly setting in for Mena.
“In school, you learn how a disease progresses or how the virus looks, but then we actually see this is a 4-year-old who was hospitalized with this disease and she recovered, but she’s still going to have issues with X, Y and Z,” she said. “It’s studying medicine with a human perspective instead of a book perspective. It’s real to me now. I see how it impacts people. It’s been really nice to see humans, people, patients with lives and experiences and hearing their stories.”
E23 Sydney Mena during RUOP program.
RURAL HEALTH HEROES
DR. GEIDL AND DR. KATZMAN HONORED WITH AWARDS
Each year, the Idaho Rural Health Association honors exceptional providers and advocates for rural and underserved communities across Idaho. At the end of 2024, Dr. Rayme Geidl was honored with the Rural Health Innovator Award and Dr. Rebecca Katzman was named the Rural Health Educator of the year.
Rayme Geidl, MD
Idaho WWAMI
TRUST Co-Director/ Associate Director of Clinical Education
• 1993, Undergrad: BS, Zoology, University of Idaho
• 1998, Medical School: MD, University of Nevada School of Medicine
• 2001, Residency: Family Medicine Spokane
Dr. Rayme Geidl is committed to improving access to healthcare for Idahoans.
As the Idaho WWAMI TRUST Co-Director & Associate Director of Clinical Education, Dr. Rayme Geidl supports the development of rural medicine in the state. She has grown the TRUST program, fostering a passion for rural medicine in medical students.
She places these students in rural clinics and hospitals for hands-on experience, ensuring students receive the guidance and support that they need to grow into Idaho’s next generation of rural physicians.
Through her role at Idaho WWAMI, Dr. Geidl has fostered strong relationships between the medical school, rural communities and healthcare providers, encouraging collaboration to address the unique challenges faced by rural healthcare.
Dr. Geidl has played a vital role in attracting and training future physicians to serve rural communities, improving access to health care for Idahoans.
Rebecca Katzman, MD
Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Family Medicine
TRUST/WRITE Site Director
• 2007, Undergrad: Wellesley College
• 2011, Medical School: Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons
• 2014, Residency: Family Medicine Residency of Idaho
• 2015, Fellowship: Advanced Obstetrics Fellowship, Swedish Family Medicine Seattle, WA
Dr. Rebecca Katzman is a dedicated and talented rural health educator and clinician.
As a Clinical Assistant Professor at Clearwater Valley Hospital and Clinics, she has impacted the medical education of Idaho WWAMI students through her mentorship and guidance.
Her commitment to training Idaho’s future physicians is evident in her dedication to WWAMI’s programs RUOP, WRITE and TRUST. She has devoted countless hours to providing direct clinical education and mentorship to students, ensuring they receive the best learning experience possible.
She has dedicated her career to serving the needs of rural communities and is a strong advocate for rural health and has worked tirelessly to improve access to care in underserved areas.
Dr. Katzman’s passion for rural health and her dedication to her students make her an invaluable asset to the field of medical education.
EDUCATING EDUCATORS
ADDRESSING THE SHORTAGE OF CLINICALLY TRAINED ANATOMISTS
Over the past 50 years, medical schools have had a front row seat to the decline of clinically trained anatomists. In 1969, 163 doctorates in anatomy were awarded nationally, while by 2017, there was a record low of eight.
The field of anatomy, a vital component of medical education where students learn about the physical makeup of the human body, is facing challenges as the number of doctoral graduates with this expertise declines, resulting in a shortage of qualified instructors. University of Idaho’s School of Health and Medical Professions (SHAMP) has developed a Doctor of Anatomical Sciences (DAS) program. The program is aimed at training anatomists in human anatomy and anatomy technologies, and filling anatomy educator positions that have been unfilled for years.
“As you follow the progression of medical education, the anatomy content has just been squeezed out more and more over the years,” said Joshua Johnson, Idaho WWAMI’s anatomy lab manager. “You can literally draw an almost exponential decrease in anatomy, from several thousand hours of content in a medical student’s career to barely a hundred.
In the U.S., the number of anatomy educator job postings at medical schools more than doubled from 21 in 2017 to 52 in 2018. Twenty-one percent of those postings went unfilled.
“Anatomists have been crying out about this for the last 20 years,” Pfeiffer said. “The system is structured for research. It’s not geared toward producing students with a good foundation in anatomy and anatomy-related courses. They’re just not getting that training anymore, let alone training in how to teach. Consequently, as junior faculty begin their academic careers, they often face the challenge of being asked to teach content that falls far outside of their comfort zone and to do so with no training in how to deliver that content effectively.”
Curricula prioritizing biomedical sciences like pharmacology, genetics and immunology have steadily replaced anatomy content in medical schools. At the same time, doctoral programs have shifted their focus to producing researchers in these areas, perpetuating the lack of trained anatomists.”
The DAS will provide a terminal degree in anatomy, allowing its graduates to pursue careers as tenure track anatomy educators in medical schools and other health care programs. Students will study both human anatomy and the most effective methods of teaching the subject.
“The program addresses a need to train healthcare professions educators, to give them content mastery along with a strong foundation in how to teach,” said David Pfeiffer, director of anatomical sciences at Idaho WWAMI. “That teaching component, which is being coupled with content mastery, that’s not done in other programs.”
Research shows that medical school departmental leaders prioritize hiring anatomists who have teaching experience, something increasingly difficult to find.
SHAMP’S DAS PROGRAM WILL BEGIN SUMMER 2025.
Pathologists are medical detectives. They’re puzzle solvers, piecing together signs and symptoms until they figure out a diagnosis.
From unknown brain masses to bone marrow biopsies, pathologists have their eyes on everything.
“Some people have described pathology as the doctor’s doctor,” said George Hodges, clinical associate professor at Idaho WWAMI. “People come to us all the time asking, ‘What is it? What should I do now? What does this mean?’”
How to “Sherlock Holmes” Disease
Pathology is the diagnostic evaluation of
tissue and body fluid. It is a specialty used to answer questions about a patient’s symptoms, provide a diagnosis and subsequently, a course of action.
Hodges, a pathologist for 30 years before coming to teach at Idaho WWAMI, explained how pathology plays a unique role in providing medical care.
“Every case is like a little mystery that needs to be solved, and it’s really crucial that the diagnosis is right, because that’s the way the patient gets the right therapy,” Hodges said. “That was the most exciting part to me.”
While at Idaho WWAMI, students spend time
during the Foundations phase — the first two years of medical school — studying pathology in the classroom, with the option to do an elective pathology rotation once they start their clinical rotations during the last two years of medical school.
“There is also a pathology fellowship that students can do either between their second and third year or third and fourth,” Hodges said. “It’s offered through the University of Washington. Students spend a whole year as a pathology resident. They only choose a couple of students every year. Several of our students have been chosen for this in the past.”
A Cure- ious Mind Takes On the Body’s Mysteries
Pathology, like other medical specialties, has many facets. Anatomical versus clinical pathology being one of them.
“I always preferred anatomic pathology,” Hodges said. “Clinical pathology is overseeing the operation of the lab — it’s a lot of administrative stuff. Anatomic pathology is what most pathologists prefer to do. That’s where you do actual tissue diagnosis.”
Despite being an integral part of the Foundations curriculum, clinical rotations in pathology are not required by most medical schools, something Hodges said he wished would be updated due to the general misunderstanding of what a pathologist does.
“Most people view the pathology lab as a black box,” Hodges said. “You take a specimen, you send it into this black box, and it spits out an answer, but they have no idea what goes on in the background.”
Pathology is a team sport, and developing an understanding of what goes on in the lab is crucial for strengthening the working relationship between pathologists and others involved in patient care.
FIVE QUESTIONS WITH ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF CLINICAL BIOMECHANICS
NICKOLAI MARTONICK
What are some goals you are hoping to achieve in the next year?
We have multiple papers that are currently being worked on by the students, so getting those out for peer review is a priority. We also have new projects going on including a student-led figure skating project and a project related to the bone health and gait mechanics of postmenopausal-women.
What has been your favorite research project to ever work on?
There was a side project during my doctorate that my colleagues and I undertook. We investigated whether we could improve post workout muscle soreness with IASTM. It was so much fun because our participants had to induce muscle soreness
with the dynamometer (a strength testing machine). The participants worked so hard to get sore and my colleagues and I had so much fun collecting that data.
How did you come to your current career?
I will start with my first year in the athletic training program. I was at my first clinical rotation working with volleyball players. I noticed that all but one of the player’s knees would come together when they were jumping or landing. So I sketched out a device that would stretch when their knees came together and provide feedback that informed them to correct their form. I took this idea to Dr. Rusty Baker and we came up with a project using Kinesio Tape and I used the biomechanics lab to test
whether it improved jumping form in female athletes. After this project I was hooked on research and biomechanics. While working in the biomechanics lab I met my Ph.D. mentor Dr. Joshua Bailey and the rest is history.
If you weren’t in this career, what other career would you be working in?
My undergraduate degree is in Art and if I was not doing this I would want to work in the design industry in some capacity (cars, clothes, products) anything that starts as a drawing.
Are there any lessons you’ve learned from your past and/or present students?
The biggest thing I have learned from the medical students who have come through my lab (and the med students I work with in class) is work ethic. They just keep working. I don’t see it as working for themselves but for their profession and future patients. This is what motivates me to give my best effort as a research mentor.
FIVE QUESTIONS WITH ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT & FAMILY STUDIES
SARAH DEMING
What are some goals you are hoping to achieve in the next year?
I’m really excited about the pilot project that I am designing, a survey of birthing folks at Kootenai hospital. I’m collecting baseline data regarding perinatal well-being. I’m defining wellbeing broadly to include physical well-being so markers of health, nutrition, exercise, things like that, and also mental well-being, economic wellbeing. I’m interested in relationships between women and work, economic security, social well-being, support systems, feeling of support, things like that. I’ll collect a baseline basically immediately after birth, like in the first two weeks postpartum, and then with regular follow up surveys to track how well-being changes over time, the post birth period.
What has been your favorite research project to ever work on?
One project that really sticks with me is a project I did with a grant from the Social Security Administration during my doctoral program where I interviewed mothers who received disability benefits, and tried to understand how they thought about work and trying to return to work, what the barriers to working were, and how children changed the way they thought about employment with their disability. The Social Security Administration didn’t ask questions about whether people had children. They didn’t know which of their beneficiaries
had children. The findings of that project really shed light on the unique kind of constraints that children posed to women who had disabilities, as far as maintaining any kind of employment, but then also how children motivated women to seek employment in ways that maybe people without children might not. It opened my eyes to the power of qualitative work. It convinced the Social Security Administration to add a question to the national survey about parent status, because it proved to be such an important and overlooked fact.
How
did you come to your current career?
I got my bachelor’s degree in 2003 at Western Washington University and I was applying to grad programs when I found out I was pregnant, and that changed the course of my life. I dove into being a mom for a period of time. I learned how to do bookkeeping and I ended up creating a bit of a bookkeeping empire. I could have kept bookkeeping as a career, but as my youngest entered kindergarten and my time freed up, I
realized I was bored with it and wanted to use my brain in a different way. I’m a researcher at heart. I always want to ask questions. I originally thought I wanted to do parent education stuff, so I started at U of I in their family and consumer science department, and got my Master’s there, but I really got hooked on sociology, so I ended up pursuing a Ph.D. in sociology where I followed the typical Ph.D. student route of teaching and doing research. I love the research piece. But I really love teaching. I like the academic setting and the university setting.
If you weren’t in this career, what other career would you be working in?
If I wasn’t in academia, I think the other career I’d seriously consider is working in a policy think tank, like in a research capacity, but with an emphasis on policy developments and research with a focus on developing policy and forming policy. But when I applied for full-time research jobs, I thought about which components I would miss of academia. And it’s really teaching and working with students. I think I have a lot to learn from younger people who might think a little bit differently, see things differently, have different experiences, and that’s why I’m staying where I am. I can do research and try to focus on translational research that can be directed
towards policy and impact, not just sitting on the virtual shelves of academic journals, but is out there in the world especially in this maternal kind of perinatal well-being space.
Are there any lessons you’ve learned from your past and/or present students?
There’s not like a particular lesson that stands out to me or pops to the top of my head, I just feel like I learn from students every day. I think you just learn from humans in general that come to the table with different perspectives and different experiences.
NAVIGATING AGING
SUPPORTING HEALTHIER LIVES FOR AN AGING POPULATION
In an age when people are living longer than ever, a conundrum has arisen; people may be stretching out their golden years, but they aren’t necessarily healthier.
The field of gerontology — the study of aging — focuses on how to guide people through the aging process healthily.
The School of Health and Medical Professions (SHAMP) has developed a Master of Science in Gerontology aimed at educating healthcare professionals in the study of aging and how they can best support the rising number of elderly patients through the aging process.
“I define successful aging as quality of life,” said Sue Anderson, associate director of program development at SHAMP. “People are living longer, but they’re not living healthier. I don’t think it’s enough to increase the quantity of years you are living. We must also look at how we improve the quality of those days.”
Successful aging is “rooted in prevention”
Thomas Farrer, associate director of program development at SHAMP, said successful aging is “rooted in prevention,” and, though there are things outside medicine’s control, there are tactics people can take to age healthily.
“My mind always goes to dementia,” he said. “We know that one of the biggest predictors of dementia is lifestyle, so people should try to remain physically active. We know certain things negatively impact the brain, like smoking. We know that if someone has a diet that’s rich in antioxidant food and anti-inflammatory food, they reduce the risk of developing dementia over time.”
Farrer said that although some people are genetically destined to experience symptoms of dementia, people can often offset when it starts, even by decades.
“If I diagnose a patient with Alzheimer’s, they want to know what to do about it. That broke my heart, because these are progressive illnesses. What we should have done is intervene 25 years earlier, so they didn’t develop it at all,” Farrer said. “For me, the goal of gerontology is to prevent this from happening in the first place. I want more professionals to have that knowledge early, when they’re working with people in their 40s, 50s and 60s, before these diseases develop.”
Today, the average lifespan is approximately 77 years. Anderson explained that in the early 1900s, when the average lifespan was around 50
years, people didn’t live long enough to develop illnesses such as dementia. But now that people are living into their 70s, they need to learn to manage their health to prevent these diseases from happening.
She said that more attention needs to be paid to keeping people healthy, rather than treating diseases after diagnosis. This requires more education on how to care for the country’s aging population.
“I’ve always been an upstream thinker,” Anderson said. “How do we keep people as healthy as they can be? We’re not going to teach you how to die. We want to teach you how to live with the number of birthday candles that you have on your cake. We want you to embrace those candles and to be the best version of yourself that you can be.”
SHAMP’s Master of Science in Gerontology is an online degree and will begin Fall 2025.
