VCU's Geriatric Education Center receives a $1 million grant

By Marcia Meredith

RICHMOND, Va. – The executive director of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Geriatric Education Center wants to inspire young people to pursue careers in gerontology. She also wants to encourage health-care professionals to increase their knowledge and sensitivity when interacting with the elderly.

Armed with a recent $1 million grant from the Bureau of Health Professions, Iris Parham, Ph.D., executive director of the VGEC and chair of gerontology in VCU’s School of Allied Health Professions, will work toward these educational goals and others over the next five years.

"The grant will enable us to accelerate our work in geriatric education across the commonwealth and to launch our Gerontology and Geriatrics Career Awareness program in local elementary, middle and high schools," Parham said. "We want to expose youths to rewarding careers that focus on meeting the needs of the elderly."

During her career, Parham often discovered a lack of public awareness about her profession. "I’ve encountered professionals with doctoral and master’s degrees who aren’t sure what gerontologists do. However, during my tenure here for the past 24 years, I think this lack of awareness is slowly starting to change."

The VGEC has educated more than 40,000 health-care professionals in geriatrics and gerontology. Through a multitude of community and academic partners at VCU’s Medical College of Virginia Hospitals, the University of Virginia and the Eastern Virginia Medical School, the VGEC offers training and mentoring across 16 disciplines including all allied health professions, nursing, dentistry, medicine, pharmacy and social work.

"The new grant is designed to build on the foundations we’ve already established to help fill the unmet training needs of practitioners who serve Virginia’s elderly," Parham said. "One of our objectives will be to provide interdisciplinary and discipline-specific training in geriatrics through distance-education modules, credit courses and formal academic certificate programs."

This is the 15-year-old center’s first five-year grant. "We are now able to track trainees over a longer time period to better determine the impact of our efforts," Parham said.

The Bureau of Health Professions grant also will enable health-care professionals, social workers, certified nursing assistants and others to participate in VGEC mentoring programs and continuing education conferences and workshops around the state. Additionally, the center will host international videoconferences.

"While we will continue to work with our university partners and organizations around Virginia, we would like to forge new academic partnerships when we launch new training programs," Parham said. The center’s partners include a wide range of groups such as the Virginia Center on Aging, the Virginia Department for the Aging, the Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services and the Virginia Health Quality Center.

The VGEC is one of 41 such facilities in the United States. Fourteen have received grant funding in this round of grant competition.