Annual Report

Faculty, staff, and trainees are making important contributions to research, policy, and practice in the area of integrated care at the Center . We are pleased to share our updates in the Roger C. Lipitz Center for Integrated Health Care 2019 - 2020 Annual Report. 

Read the letter from the center director found at the beginning of the Annual Report: 

As I reflect on my second year as Center Director, I am immensely proud of what faculty, staff, and trainees have accomplished to advance our triple mission of 1) training the next generation of scholars and practitioners, 2) contributing new knowledge and 3) reshaping perceptions, care, and policies to improve the lives of those living with complex care needs and disability. I am pleased to highlight important accomplishments over the course of the last year:

Sustained research productivity. Center faculty and trainees led or coauthored more than 70 peer-review publications in high-impact journals, including JAMA, the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA Internal Medicine, JAMA Network Open, the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, and Health Affairs. Findings from this work have been featured in mainstream media outlets such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Reuters, at scientific and policy meetings, and disseminated to a network of more than 3,000 policy-makers, researchers, and experts through our quarterly newsletter and a growing social media presence.

We are committed to mentorship, and our trainees are thriving. Post-doctoral fellow Julia Burgdorf received new awards from the Alliance for Home Health Quality and the Visiting Nurse Association of New York to pursue studies to understand and improve the quality of home health care. Doctoral student Mani Keita continues her research to assess correlates and consequences of caregiving-related work productivity loss, supported by external awards from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Center for Equitable Growth. Our trainees’ research is garnering notice. Julia Burgdorf and Kelly Anderson were selected for podium presentations of dissertation research findings at the 2020 annual meeting of AcademyHealth. Doctoral student So-Yeon Kang led studies on drug pricing that were published in JAMA, Health Affairs, and the American Journal of Public Health, and Linda Chyr led a paper on transitional care that was published in the Gerontologist.

We are producing new knowledge. The COVID-19 pandemic amplifies the importance of our work to understand and improve care and quality of life for those who are most vulnerable. Led by Judy Kasper and Vicki Freedman of the University of Michigan, the National Institute on Aging-supported National Health and Aging Trends Study released its ninth annual wave of data collection for a nationally representative sample of older Medicare beneficiaries living in the community and a range of residential care facilities. The tenth wave of data collection is now underway, including a supplemental mailed survey to understand the impact of COVID-19 on older people and those who assist them. Nearly 4,000 users from around the world have registered to access NHATS data (on the newly redesigned website www.nhats.org) to shed light on trends and trajectories in older adults’ health and function, services use, end-of-life care, and on the experiences of family and unpaid caregivers through examining its linked National Study of Caregiving.

We are identifying avenues for policy and clinical intervention. Through novel analyses Center members are identifying new approaches to improve care quality and outcomes. Work by Lauren Nicholas published in JAMA Internal Medicine identified excess mortality and emergency hospitalizations among older adults receiving care from health care workers involved in fraudulent practices. With the support of a CDC-funded pilot study from the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy, Lisa Reider and collaborator Joe Levy are opening a new line of investigation to understand trends and correlates of injurious falls among the growing number of older adults living to greater ages. Chanee Fabius, supported by a new pilot award from the Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions, and post-doctoral fellow Safiyyah Okoye are initiating new work that draws on NHATS to examine the effect of social and environmental factors related to where people live on the health and well-being of older adults.

We are innovating. By conducting embedded interventional studies within care delivery settings, our work contributes new knowledge on models of care that are poised for widespread diffusion. Two trials funded by the National Institute on Aging are being launched by Jennifer Wolff and Sydney Dy to test whether and how simple, scalable strategies to stimulate advance care planning in primary care among older adults and their family care partners leads to improved communication and end-of-life care. With the support of a NIA pilot award from the Hopkins Resource Center for Minority Aging Research, Chanee Fabius is launching a new study to understand how to better support direct care workers of older adults with disability and dementia who are receiving Medicaid-funded home and community-based services. Lisa Reider, Associate-Director of the Coordinating Center of the Major Extremity Trauma and Rehabilitation Consortium (METRC) and colleagues are pioneering strategies to improve orthopaedic trauma care and outcomes through a Department of Defense-funded network of clinical centers that conducts multi-center clinical research studies.

Amber Willink and Karen Davis are conducting analyses of Medicare policy with a Commonwealth Fund-supported project to examine Medicare Benefit Design and Long-term Services and Supports. They are focusing on how Medicare beneficiaries have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and policy improvements in Medicare to ensure financial protection for beneficiaries at heightened health risk, and to extend Medicare to older adults who have lost jobs as a result of the pandemic. They have recently published important policy pieces outlining expansion of benefits and options for shoring up Medicare’s fiscal solvency of interest to policymakers in Congress and the Administration in 2021.

We are creating change through transformative partnerships that improve care quality and outcomes. An important accomplishment in this area is Dan Polsky’s launch of the Johns Hopkins Business of Health Initiative to integrate research, practice, and policy to improve the performance of the nation’s health system. Dan Polsky, Judy Kasper, and Jennifer Wolff contributed to National Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine activities related to equitable allocation of COVID-19 vaccines (Polsky), and dementia care and services (Kasper and Wolff). Jennifer Wolff Co-Chaired the 2020 National Institute on Aging Summit on Dementia Care and Services to inform priorities for future research to improve the lives of those affected by dementia.

We are building community. With support of a new P30 award from the National Institute on Aging we are launching the Hopkins Economics of Alzheimer’s Disease and Services (HEADS) Center to stimulate research that improves the care and lives of those affected by Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Led by Dan Polsky and Jennifer Wolff, HEADS will build interdisciplinary collaborations and increase population-based knowledge of dementia care and its impacts and advance solutions that address accessibility, affordability, quality, and equity of care. The HEADS Center will amplify the Lipitz Center’s research and policy focus on complex care needs and disability by drawing new faculty and students from Public Health and Medicine to these important issues and establishing new linkages to other centers in the University community. As the training and research footprint of the Roger C. Lipitz Center expands, we are building needed infrastructure to support our work. New Communications Associate Munin Streitz has joined our team to oversee all aspects of Center-related communications, and we anticipate further growth of our team to support the HEADS Center’s remote data enclave and administration.

The Roger C. Lipitz Center has made great strides over the last year toward advancing our mission in the areas of education, research, and practice. The importance of our work has been heightened in the context of current events and vulnerabilities uncovered by the COVID-19 outbreak. The tremendous commitment, talent, and passion of our faculty, staff, and trainees bode well for our ability to sustain and deepen our work in these challenging times.

Jennifer Wolff, PhD

Eugene and Mildred Lipitz Professor