Meet Aanand
Q&A with Aanand D. Naik, MD from Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston, TX.
“Find something you are passionate about – something you dream about, think about in the shower or while driving, etc. Then, find a team of collaborators, preferably an interprofessional one, who share your passion.”
Q: How long have you been a GSA member?
A: GSA is dedicated to improving the health and lives of older adults. That has always been a professional and personal motivation for me. So it’s only natural that I become a member and involved with the organization.
Q: You are a Hartford Change AGEnt. What is your Hartford affiliation and what was that project?
A: In 2006, I was fortunate to receive my first national grant from the Hartford Foundation that launched my academic career. I received a Hartford Geriatrics Health Outcomes Research Scholars Award to develop goal-directed care models for older adults with diabetes and hypertension. We subsequently developed and tested interventions of our models of goal-directed care. Our current clinical trial attempts to embedded this model into patient centered medical homes within the VA health system. My current Hartford affiliations with the Patient Centered Medical Home Network and the Care-Align initiative are natural extensions of my research and practice change efforts.
Q: How did you become interested in the field of aging?
A: Lifelong really. I grew up with my great-grandmother and grandparents in our home and have always had a great respect for the wisdom and involvement of older adults in my life. In medical school, I found a handful of role-models who were academic geriatricians that inspired me to pursue this career path.
Q: What was your inspiration for your practice change initiative/project?
A: As a medical resident, I became interested in tackling the medical issues that older adults face. Common chronic conditions are considered mundane but they become complex in older adults with multiple conditions and functional limitations. Addressing and ameliorating these conditions to improve daily lives provides a lot of personal satisfaction. However the current model of primary care emphasizes single disease management models with high intensity testing, medications, and other therapeutics that sometimes do more harm than good in the aggregate. The organizational, communications, and economic incentives of our current model of health care are often not in the best interest of older adults with multiple morbidities. I was inspired first by this problem. However, the more ongoing inspiration is the dogmatic persistence of this model of care despite its obvious flaws. Developing and implementing solutions is surprising difficult. Our current system functions from the perspectives of doctors and nurses who are focused on diseases, often one disease at a time. We rarely address patients’ and caregivers’ perspectives and rarely from the vantage point of their life values and health goals. Collaboratively helping patients develop health goals is not easy or straightforward. We have previously tested a group-based model of goal-setting in primary care funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research. We are currently testing a telephone-based model of collaborative goal-setting for older adults with diabetes and depression in a randomized clinical trial funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Our next challenge is to embed these interventions within routine primary care medical homes that integrate clinicians’ treatment plans with patients’ goals.
Q: What are your key responsibilities at your job?
A: In addition to my research program and responsibilities, I also direct the education and training programs at our research center. In this role, I supervise a number of doctoral, postdoctoral, and postresidency training fellowships for clinicians and non-clinical PhDs as well as physicians and nurses. These fellowships are focused on health services research and quality improvement sciences. In particular, I direct the coordinating center for the VA Quality Scholars Program. This is a training program for physicians and doctorally-prepared nurses at 8 VA sites across the country and a partner program in Toronto. We direct a national curriculum in quality improvement and assist with program evaluation and recruitment.
Q: Do you have any tips for emerging gerontologists and Change AGEnts?
A: Find something you are passionate about – something you dream about, think about in the shower or while driving, etc. Then, find a team of collaborators, preferably an interprofessional one, who share your passion. Meet with your team regularly to share stories and plan solutions. Identify and work towards a mutual program or goal that engages everyone on your team and addresses the problem that inspired you in the first place.
Q: Have you had an important mentor in your career or benefited from interdisciplinary relationships
A: Mentorship makes all the difference, especially if the mentors represent an interprofessional team.