Dr. Amy S. KelleyIn recent weeks on Health AGEnda, we have presented our five new program strategies: Leadership in Action, Linking Education to Practice, Developing and Disseminating Models of Care, Tools and Measures for Quality Care, and—last but not least—Public Policy and Communications. Paired with each strategy description, we have also presented an interview with a John A. Hartford Foundation grantee who is already doing the work, showing the potential value of the strategy.
If our shift in strategy moves our focus from “upstream” academic capacity building to a “downstream” emphasis on the determinants of practice, these vanguard leaders are shooting the rapids and teaching us what can be done with geriatric expertise.
This week, we highlight Amy S. Kelley, MD, MSHS, assistant professor of geriatrics and palliative medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, N.Y. Dr. Kelley is an excellent example of the way the Hartford Foundation supports the early career development of bright young scholars. She received pilot funding while earning her MSHS at UCLA and her MD at Weill Cornell Medical College; was a Hartford Centers of Excellence Scholar when she joined the faculty at Mt. Sinai; and most recently has been a Beeson Scholar and a mentor for an MSTAR student.
Dr. Kelley’s work is with large Medicare data sets and tries to understand the opportunity to improve quality and reduce cost among some of the most expensive Medicare beneficiaries. Her recent paper in Health Affairs on the cost savings of the hospice program for short stays led her to Capitol Hill, where she was able to explain her work and its implications to policy makers.
In our latest Beyond the Boardroom interview video, Dr. Kelley talks about how her participation in the summer Hartford Foundation Interdisciplinary Scholars Communications Conference—made possible through her Beeson scholarship—helped prepare her for the opportunity.
“The leadership training that Beeson promotes has been quite valuable to me,” Dr. Kelley tells senior program officer Rachael Watman. “Just this summer, I attended the Hartford Communications Conference as well as the American Association of Medical Colleges Leadership Seminar for Early Career Women in Academic Medicine. And I’ve already put the skills from these programs to use in communicating about the results of my research, in making a visit to Capitol Hill for a congressional briefing, and so forth. It’s really been an important way for me to develop as a leader myself.”
In the video below, she explains how she got started in her work in geriatrics and how she has been supported by the Foundation.
http://youtu.be/FBpPn1POLFw
Doing policy research and communicating about the results to audiences in Washington, state capitals, or the leadership of professional disciplines are the kinds of work we foresee doing under this strategy. Dr. Kelley is leading the way.