As population ages, the need for geriatric specialists increases

GALVESTON, Texas - Five medical school students have been selected to participate in this year's Medical Student Training in Aging Research Program at the Sealy Center on Aging.

The MSTAR students are Shera Carlson, Yu Lee, Gloria Li, Co-May Nguyen and Francisco Pastar-Shirazi.

The MSTAR program is a collaborative effort between the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and the University of Pittsburgh. It offers first-year medical students an intensive introduction to aging research during which they work closely with mentors in a structured research environment and attend didactic conferences and lectures on aging. Students are encouraged to submit abstracts and present their research projects at annual meetings including the American Geriatric Society and the National Student Research Forum.

"The whole idea is to get the students involved in geriatrics and geriatric research early on in their medical training," said Tony DiNuzzo, associate director of research in the Sealy Center on Aging, who administers the MSTAR program.

Funded by a T35 training grant, students enrolled in the program receive stipends for supplies and for travel to American Geriatric Society conferences. This is the fourth year of the five-year grant. Sponsored nationally by the American Federation of Aging Research, the program is incorporated into UTMB's Medical Student Summer Research Program and participants receive research credits for their work. The T35 grant is a short-term grant used to develop or enhance research training.

"We're not just trying to get students involved with aging research," DiNuzzo said. "We hope that the program will also encourage medical students to consider careers in geriatrics."

The need for geriatric specialists is desperate and getting worse, DiNuzzo said. Among all practicing physicians today, there are slightly more than 9,000 geriatricians serving some 37 million older Americans.

"By 2029, there will be about 77 million older persons and unless we can do something dramatic about the current replacement rate, there will still be only 9,000 geriatricians to go around," DiNuzzo said.

It gets worse. For example, there are fewer than 300 geriatric fellows in training in America this year.

Normally, only four students are admitted into the program but because of the large number of applicants this year, 12, a fifth slot was added using funds from other sources.

This year the program runs from May 5 through June 27.

"It works out well because of that block of time medical students have between the first and second year," DiNuzzo said. "They really don't have that kind of block after that."

Mentors are matched with students based on the subject area the student plans to investigate and guide them throughout the intensive, full-time summer session. "They are always ready to take on a new student," DiNuzzo said. "These students are the next crop of researchers in aging that we have to encourage and this is one way to do it."

The mentors this year are Professors Kenneth Ottenbacher, Kurt Mossberg, Kyle Timmerman, John Papaconstantinou, Glenn Ostir and Hiroshi Saito, and Drs. Mark Evers and Elena Volpi.

"Along with their projects, we help them develop a poster presentation," DiNuzzo said.

The MSSRP sponsors a poster session near the end of the summer program. All the MSSRP groups participate and there are awards for best poster in a number of categories.

"We also encourage the students to participate as posters in our forum on aging in October," he said. "Then there's the National Research Student Forum that occurs in April so the following April they participate in that."

For more information about the MSTAR program, contact DiNuzzo at (409) 772-5367 or adinuzzo@utmb.edu.