Meet the AGEM Leaders!

President - Liz Goldberg, MD, ScM

• Affiliation: University of Colorado, Denver
• Academic interest: geriatric fall prevention, digital health
• Current or prior funding: GEMSSTAR R03, BEESON K76

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.

President-Elect - Katie Hunold Buck, MD

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

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.

Secretary - Surriya Colleen Ahmad, MD

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 - Kalpana Narayan Shankar, MD, MSc, MS

Bio coming soon!

Immediate Past President - Lauren Cameron Comasco, MD

Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine; Director of Geriatric Emergency Medicine and Fellowship

• Affiliation: Beaumont Health System, Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine
• Academic interest: geriatric emergency care, cognitive impairment, operations, resident education​

Dr. Cameron-Comasco is Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine. She is the Director of Geriatric Emergency Medicine and the Geriatric Emergency Medicine Fellowship Director at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, MI. Dr. Cameron-Comasco received her medical degree from Wayne State University School of Medicine and completed her residency at Henry Ford Hospital, where she served as Chief Resident. After residency, she joined the Department of Emergency Medicine at Beaumont Royal Oak and completed her fellowship in Geriatric Emergency Medicine. Beaumont's ED was Accredited as a Level 2 Geriatric Emergency Department under her leadership. She has studied the operational effects of implementing a Geriatric Emergency Department. Her interests lie in geriatric emergency medicine education and the optimization of older adult care in the Emergency Department.

Member-at-Large - Anita N. Chary, MD, PhD

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 - Cameron Gettel, MD, MHS

• Affiliation: Yale University School of Medicine
• 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

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. 

Member-at-Large - Fernanda Bellolio, MD, MS

• 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.
  

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.

Member-at-Large - Tessa Ringer, MD, JD, CCFP

Bio coming soon!

Resident Representative - Lily Berrin, MD

• Affiliation: Alameda Health System, Highland Hospital, Oakland, California
• Academic interest: Geriatrics, geriatric trauma, falls, geriatric medical education

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.

Medical Student Representative - Nicole Zhao

• Affiliation: Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University 
• Academic interest: Geriatric Emergency Care, End of Life Communication, Advance Care Planning

Nicole Zhao is a third-year medical student at the Renaissance School of Medicine and is currently finishing up her clerkship year. She will be applying for Emergency Medicine residency in the next year. She completed an undergraduate degree in biological sciences at Stony Brook University. She hopes to combine her love for emergency medicine with her passion for geriatric medicine in her future career. Having spent the last ten years as one of the primary caretakers of her grandmother with Alzheimer’s Disease, she is inspired to continue advocating and improving the quality of care for geriatric patients, an underserved population that makes up a large portion of patients in the emergency room. So far, her research has focused on identifying older patients in the ED with life-limiting illnesses and incorporating palliative care and advanced care planning, as well as healthcare system changes that can improve geriatric care. She also has extensive leadership experience at her home institution, promoting emergency medicine through their interest group as well as shedding light on the often marginalized geriatric population. She hopes to continue and expand upon her work to improve care for the growing population of older adults in the ED.