Annette (Annie) Medina-Walpole, MD
Annie Medina-Walpole, MD, has built a vocation astir 1 word: yes.
“I said ‘yes’ much than ‘no’. I deliberation that opens truthful galore doors,” says the main of the Division of Geriatrics & Aging, the Paul H. Fine Professor of Medicine, and manager of the UR Aging Institute.
Her latest “yes” was an enthusiastic 1 to URMC CEO and SMD Dean Mark Taubman, MD, who successful 2016 charged her with gathering the Institute. At the time, she was the University’s typical to the Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership successful Academic Medicine (ELAM) program, a prestigious, yearlong, nationalist fellowship for women successful medicine. She started gathering a program for the Institute arsenic her fellowship project, bringing unneurotic radical from each country of the University to make an infrastructure and priorities successful each area.
Medina-Walpole is simply a acquainted sanction successful the satellite of American geriatrics. She joined the American Geriatrics Society arsenic a main resident, and by midcareer she was connected the board, serving arsenic president successful 2020-2021. Right now, she’s co-leading an introspection of diversity, equity, and inclusion for the 6,000-member society, urging a rethink connected ageism and racism successful wellness care, peculiarly for older radical of color—an contented that came to airy during the pandemic.
“It’s not astir conscionable hosting a grooming league oregon webinar, a one-and-done. We’re embedding this enactment into the cloth of our society,” she says. “We’re creating a multi-year, multi-pronged attack to code the intersection of structural racism and ageism. Our eventual extremity is wellness attraction systems that are escaped of favoritism and bias.”
Medina-Walpole has held conscionable astir each enactment station successful geriatrics acquisition astatine URMC since joining the module successful 1998. She sees her relation successful the Institute arsenic that of a convener, a connector, and a mentor. Outside the University, she is helping to stitch the Institute into the wider community, where, similar Medina-Walpole herself, older adults are gathering networks of their ain to amended the lives of their peers.
“We are not conscionable focused connected however we tin assistance older people, but besides connected however they tin assistance us. It’s important to spot aging successful a antithetic light,” she says. “I genuinely judge the possibilities are endless with what we tin bash to empower older radical to prosecute with our University, unrecorded longer and healthier lives, and guarantee that everyone tin property with vitality.”
English (US)