Expert on aging named director of UF institute

An internationally known expert on aging has been named to lead University of Florida efforts to improve the health of older Americans, university officials announced today.

Marco Pahor, M.D., a professor of medicine and director of the Sticht Center on Aging at Wake Forest University, will be chairman of a new department at UF’s College of Medicine and serve as director of the UF Institute on Aging, announced Douglas Barrett, M.D., senior vice president for health affairs, and Craig Tisher, M.D., dean of the College of Medicine.

The appointment begins Feb. 1.

“We have to be leaders in understanding and solving the problems of an aging America,” said Barrett. “We have considerable strength in gerontology, rehabilitation and working in social problems associated with the aged. The addition of Dr. Pahor builds the geriatric research component. He will bring new clinical trials and research programs to UF.”

Pahor’s arrival coincides with the creation of the department of aging and geriatric research in the College of Medicine and will bring new leadership to the Institute on Aging at the Health Science Center. The institute will pool the talents of diverse scientists to address the theme of disability in aging Americans, and the department — which will include faculty from a mix of disciplines — will serve as a foundation.

“The College of Medicine and the Health Science Center have made a real commitment to develop a world-class institute that will focus on aging and geriatrics,” Tisher said. “We believe we have a world-class leader of this institute in Dr. Pahor.”

The new department, the first in the country to focus primarily on aging-related research, will concentrate on finding ways to prevent disabilities in an aging population, Tisher said. In general, these disabilities prevent people from performing basic activities of daily living, such as walking, eating, dressing, bathing, toileting or getting out of bed.

“We are where cardiovascular disease was about 40 years ago, when we started to learn high blood pressure and high cholesterol were bad,” Pahor said. “Treating hypertension and cholesterol translated into prevention of major clinical events in cardiac patients. In aging, we are just beginning to learn potential areas to intervene. Our approach uses the entire spectrum of investigation — from basic science to animal studies to clinical research — to understand what leads to disability and how to intervene.”

Pahor received his medical degree in 1980 from Catholic University in Rome, where he later received specialty thesis degrees in internal medicine and gerontology and geriatrics. He’s been section head of geriatric medicine and gerontology at Wake Forest and director of the Sticht Center on Aging since 1999. Pahor also served as principal investigator of a Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center, funded by the National Institute on Aging.

The collaborations Pahor and the aging institute engender at UF will help attract larger research support grants, officials said.

“Dr. Pahor is an international leader who will synergize the talent on this campus and move forward with an agenda to address issues of aging,” said Pamela Duncan, Ph.D., director of the Brooks Center for Rehabilitation Studies and a professor in the College of Public Health and Health Professions. “We can now integrate aging in terms of both preventive strategies and rehabilitation. Because of our population, there’s no greater need anywhere than in this state for these kinds of programs of excellence. UF is really poised to set the agenda for world-class research and clinical practice.”

Likewise, Pahor said UF’s research strength, bolstered by its brain and genetics institutes, Health Science Center colleges and collaborations with organizations such as Veterans Affairs, is well suited to serve Florida’s older population, which in turn provides a strong basis for research.

As for the new department, officials expect it to dovetail with the recently formed division of geriatric medicine within the department of medicine, which will emphasize clinical aspects of aging and maintaining a healthy elderly population.

The geriatrics division is headed by Thomas Mulligan, M.D., who until recently was chief of geriatrics at the McGuire Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Richmond, Va., and professor of internal medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Medical College of Virginia. Tisher said medical doctors who see patients in the new department of aging likely will have dual appointments in the department of medicine, which is chaired by Edward Block, M.D.