Aging
Aging changes our relationships to health, caring, and medicine. MCL examines how medical culture shapes experiences of aging as well as how it reflects them. Our research includes three areas. First, we study how diverse communities make sense of health as they grow older. This work includes projects focused on supporting caregivers and improving healthcare decision-making. Second, we study how to safely provide routine healthcare for older adults. We examine how to support primary care clinicians as they grapple with the complex needs of aging patients. We are also exploring how to make surgical care safer and less taxing for older adults. Finally, we examine how to make care humane at end-of-life in hospitals and hospice. Some projects examine the relationship between hospital culture and burdensome care. Other projects seek to make palliative and hospice care more accessible and effective.
Current projects
- Developing Tools to Support the Appropriate Use of Surgery in Frail Older Adults (Dohan, Finlayson)
- Mapping the Dynamics of Caregiver Burden in Alzheimer's Disease (Bernstein Sideman)
- Next-Gen Ethnography to Understand Decision-Making among Diverse Populations Impacted by Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias (Dohan)
- Palliative Care for People Living at Home with Advancing Dementia and Their Caregivers (Harrison)
- Using qualitative life course perspectives to understand the lived experience of structural racism in older Black adults and its influence on goal-concordant end-of-life care (Dzeng)
MCL members involved
Collaborators and projects include:
- UCSF Division of Geriatrics (Medicine)
- UCSF Memory and Aging Center (MAC - Neurology)
- UCSF Center for Surgery in Older Adults (Surgery)
- UCSF Center for Aging and Diverse Communities (General Medicine)
- UCSF Pepper Center for Older Adults (Geriatrics)
- UCSF Care Ecosystem (MAC)
- UCSF MISCI (MAC)
- Center for Surgery and Public Health (Mass General Brigham)