Dr. Suzanne Landis has devoted her life to improving care for older adults. Dr. Suzanne Landis has devoted her life to improving care for older adults.

Suzanne Landis, MD, MPH, drives an older, sensible car. She is an understated person often found standing in the back row of group photos. But don’t let her modest demeanor fool you.

She is one of the most giving and effective people I know. Dr. Landis, who practices geriatrics in rural Western North Carolina, leads the Center for Healthy Aging at the Mountain Area Health Education Center.

Dr. Landis—who focuses on improving primary care, critically important for older Americans—is also a Practice Change Leader for Aging and Health, a program funded by the John A. Hartford Foundation and The Atlantic Philanthropies to prepare the next generation of health care leaders to redesign care to meet the needs of older adults. This initiative falls under the John A. Hartford Foundation’s Leadership in Action grants portfolio.

So it came as no surprise that Dr. Landis recently established an endowment in the amount of a half million dollars for the Center for Healthy Aging at the Mountain Area Health Education Center. The endowment will be used to recruit a national expert who will both teach and practice geriatric medicine and carry on Suzanne’s important legacy.

Dr. Landis selflessly pledged to give $50,000 of her own money each year for the next five years and made provisions for the balance, another $250,000, to be given from her estate. Development efforts are underway to match her generous gift, the first such donation ever made to an Area Health Education Center.

“I live modestly. I am using this money to improve the lives of older adults here in Western North Carolina,” Suzanne says. “I hope this will become a model for giving.”

Why didn’t the $500,000 gift surprise me? Because Suzanne has selflessly given to the care of older adults her entire life. Allow me to share a story with you.

Dr. Landis, center, with her parents, Dick and Nancy Lewis. Her father, a general practitioner, inspired her to pursue a life caring for rural elders. Dr. Landis, center, with her parents, Dick and Nancy Lewis. Her father, a general practitioner, inspired her to pursue a life caring for rural elders.

Western North Carolina is known for its high proportion of older adults, many living in poverty. For the past 28 years, Dr. Landis has practiced geriatrics while serving as a member of the faculty in Mountain Area Health Education Center’s Family Medicine Residency and the Geriatric Medicine Fellowship programs.

In her daily work caring for the mountain region’s most vulnerable elders, she saw that many could not afford the care they desperately needed. So in 1996, almost 20 years ago, Dr. Landis established Project Access. She asked physicians to volunteer their time to serve low-income, uninsured people, including older immigrants unable to qualify for Medicare.

Today, Project Access helps more than 3,000 people a year and has been implemented in more than 120 communities. Landis has received numerous awards, including the prestigious Innovations in American Government Award, presented by Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

When I spoke to Suzanne recently, she mentioned that her life’s work makes her parents proud. Her parents are themselves older adults. It was her father, a general practitioner who used to take her out on house calls as a child, who inspired her to pursue a life caring for rural elders.

Suzanne reminds me of one of my mentors, Mathy Mezey, PhD, RN, FAAN, a founding co-director of the Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing at New York University’s College of Nursing. Mathy often says, “Geriatric leaders are made, not born.”

The John A. Hartford Foundation is proud to support Suzanne’s advancement as a leader and her work to improve rural primary care. The Practice Change Leaders Program for Health and Aging continues to develop leaders such as Suzanne who will follow in her footsteps.


Applications are available for the 2016 cohort of the Practice Change Leaders for Aging and Health, a program that provides an opportunity to gain enhanced leadership skills and content expertise to positively influence care for older adults.

Leaders complete a project aimed at integrating improved care for older adults within their organization, allowing them to remain at their full-time job throughout the one-year program.

The program is led by Eric Coleman, MD, at the University of Colorado. For more information, visit www.changeleaders.org.