Meet Alan
Q&A with Alan B. Stevens, PhD from Baylor Scott & White Health in Temple, TX.
“Expect the complexity of the practice environment to challenge you, but never give up on making a difference in the health and well-being of older adults.”
Q: How long have you been a GSA member? Why did you become a member of GSA?
A: I became a member my first year in graduate school, 1988. I was encouraged to join by my advisor and GSA Fellow Cameron Camp, PhD. As I recall, he even paid for my membership from his faculty account. In my second year in graduate school I received a research mentorship award from GSA. The award included group meetings and mentoring from leaders in the field. I was assigned to the now deceased GSA Fellow George Maddox, DSc, PhD. Thus, GSA has made fundamental contributions to my professional career since the early days of graduate training.
Q: You are a Hartford Change AGEnt. What is your Hartford affiliation and what was that project?
A: My affiliation with the Hartford Foundation was initiated by Eric Coleman, MD, MPH. After becoming certified as a Care Transitions Coach, Coleman invited me to serve as a Regional Coordinator for the Care Transitions Intervention (CTI). The Hartford Foundation had long supported Coleman’s work in this area and Amy Berman and Rachael Watman became aware of my implementation research with the CTI and with caregiving interventions, which lead to my current role as the Co-Lead for the Dementia Caregiving Network.
Q: How did you become interested in the field of aging?
A: My interest in the field of aging is a consequence of my family experience as a child and young man. I was born to older parents, mother was 40 and father was 47. This means that I witnessed my parents’ aging process at a unique time of my life. Equally importantly during my childhood and teenage years was my interactions with my numerous aunts and uncles who were also aging before me. In fact, my 16 pairs of aunts and uncles were of an age that would be typical of grandparents. So, imagine growing up with 16 pairs of grandparents. (Yes, I was spoiled.) By the time I was in high school I could see the assortment of patterns in which they were aging. And, now I know, it was disease and social issues like isolation that accounted for the diversity in what I saw as “aging”. I was integrated by this diversity and I wanted to understand it. Later, I realized that I also wanted to intervene in this process to promote positive life experiences in late life.
Q: What practice change initiatives/projects are you currently working on and what are your intended outcomes?
A: I am co-lead of the Dementia Caregiving Network. As a Network, we are dedicated to improving the experience of family caregivers. Our initial focus in is two areas, 1) facilitating the identification and engagement of family caregivers in healthcare settings and 2) making evidence based caregiver interventions easier to understand and implement for community based organizations.
Q: What was your inspiration for your practice change initiative/project?
A: Progress in how family caregivers are supported in this critical aspect of their lives. As a profession, we know many ways to support family caregivers and yet little is changing in their day-to-day experience. That has become unacceptable. Family caregivers have needs that systems of care should be addressing. As a society, we need better recognition of the service provided by family caregivers and, in truth, our societal dependency on the care they provide.
Q: What are your key responsibilities at your job?
A: I hold the Holleman-Rampy Centennial Chair in Gerontology and I am the Director of the Center for Applied Health Research (CAHR) at Baylor Scott & White Health in Texas. In these roles, I conduct implementation research in areas of dementia caregiving, transitional care and evidence based health interventions for older adults. A key responsibility is to identify opportunities to improve health outcomes for older adults and their family caregivers with community-based health programs supported by partnerships between our integrated healthcare systems and community based organizations like Aging and Disability Resource Centers (ADRCs). The CAHR also supports the analysis of our system’s electronic health records (EHR). Research and operational reports are prepared from electronic health records generated by EPIC and a number of other source systems.
Q: What has been your most memorable practice change challenge or story?
A: The core of the story is the challenge of identifying and engaging family caregivers of persons with dementia in outpatient and inpatient healthcare settings. I began this task with great excitement and soon realized that I was ignorant of the barriers that would make this seemingly easy task so difficult. I continue to work on this challenge in my own research and as an activity of the Dementia Caregiving Network.
Q: Do you have any tips for emerging gerontologists and Change AGEnts?
A: Yes. 1) Expect to work in interdisciplinary teams, 2) Be self-aware of the value and limitation of your discipline and equally prepared to appreciate the valuable contributions of other disciplines to the work of the team, 3) Expect the complexity of the practice environment to challenge you, but never give up on making a difference in the health and well-being of older adults.
Q: Have you had an important mentor in your career or benefited from interdisciplinary relationships?
A: If so, how did it make a difference? Yes, many!! I am most thankful for my mentors during my graduate training, especially Cameron Camp. I was lucky to start by career at University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) which offered a unique, interdisciplinary approach within a top tier medical school. Lastly, I am grateful to my colleagues at Baylor Scott & White Health, which has long embraced an integrated care model that, at its core, requires interdisciplinary collaboration that reaches outside of the traditional healthcare deliver settings and into the community where individuals deal with the social, economy and environmental determinants of health.