Dr. Laura Mosqueda, professor of family medicine and director of geriatrics at the UC Irvine College of Medicine, has been named the first Ronald W. Reagan Endowed Chair in Geriatrics.
The faculty position, which includes a $2 million endowment, was created by the University of California to improve geriatric education in its health science programs and help meet the needs of the state’s aging population. UC is concurrently endowing faculty positions in geriatrics at five of its other campuses.
Dr. Mosqueda is one of the nation's leading experts on topics ranging from health issues for older adults to addressing the challenges of elder abuse," said Dr. Thomas Cesario, dean of the UCI College of Medicine. "Her selection as the first Reagan Chair shows the state's great commitment to advancing care for older adults."
Mosqueda, 44, is a board-certified family physician and geriatrician, and she is the medical director of the UCI SeniorHealth Center at UCI Medical Center in Orange. In addition, her efforts have led to the creation of the nation's first Elder Abuse Forensic Center, which brings together UCI medical experts and representatives of Orange County's Adult Protective Services, Sheriff's Department, Office of District Attorney, Public Guardian and other agencies in a coordinated battle against elder abuse. Mosqueda also has testified before the U.S. Senate's Special Committee on Aging regarding abuse, neglect and exploitation of the elderly.
Mosqueda has extensive experience in developing, implementing and teaching courses on elder abuse for physicians, law enforcement officers and prosecutors. Locally, Mosqueda serves as a member of Adult Protective Services' multidisciplinary team and fiduciary abuse specialist team. She also created and implemented the Student Senior Partner Program, an educational program that pairs UCI medical students with older adults in the community, an experience that allows students to apply classroom learning to real world experience. These older adults become important mentors and teachers for their student partners.
"I plan to use this generous endowment to create more educational opportunities so that future physicians will provide quality care for the elderly," Mosqueda said. "Our efforts, combined with the other UC programs funded by these endowments, will help change the practice of medicine for the better."
The Reagan Chair is named in honor of the former president, who served as governor of California from 1966 to 1974. In 1994, Reagan announced that he had Alzheimer's disease, raising awareness of an illness afflicting many elderly people and demonstrating the importance of understanding its impact on family. He died from complications of the disease in June 2004 at the age of 93.
About the endowment program:
The University of California has pulled together $12 million in state and private funds to fully fund six new endowed chairs in geriatric medicine -- a subspecialty dedicated to providing medical care for elderly patients.
The program's goals are to recruit and retain UC faculty clinicians who are skilled in the art and science of caring for the elderly; promote state-of-the-art teaching for UC medical students, residents and other health sciences students by ensuring that the faculty filling these chairs assume active roles as teachers and mentors; and ensure that "best practices" in geriatrics education and research are readily shared throughout the UC system.
"We are deeply grateful to the State of California and to the Archstone and the Hillblom Foundations for their generous support of this unprecedented initiative in academic medicine," said Dr. Michael Drake, vice president for health affairs in the UC Office of the President. "Dr. Mosqueda's expertise will be of immense value in addressing the health care needs of elderly Californians."
The new faculty chairs will be located at UC's five medical school campuses -- Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco -- and at the Berkeley campus. A total of $4 million in state funding was provided to UC to fund two new chairs at a level of $2 million each at the UCSF School of Medicine and at the UCI College of Medicine. Private donations will fund the other four chairs.
These new chairs will be part of the UC Academic Geriatric Resource Program, authorized by the California Legislature in 1984 as a mechanism for developing new initiatives in geriatrics, gerontology and other disciplines related to aging. The nearly 20-year-old program has a $1.1 million annual budget and a long record of collaboration among its six participating campuses.
About the University of California, Irvine:
The University of California, Irvine is a top-ranked public university dedicated to research, scholarship and community service. Founded in 1965, UCI is among the fastest-growing University of California campuses, with approximately 24,000 undergraduate and graduate students and about 1,300 faculty members. The third-largest employer in dynamic Orange County, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $3 billion.