Deborah M. Kado, MD, MS

GRECC Director

Co-Director, Stanford Longevity Canter

Most of Dr. Kado’s research involves the aging musculoskeletal system that matches well with her clinical expertise in geriatrics, osteoporosis, and metabolic bone disease. She continues to be clinically active, seeing patients at the VA Palo Alto GRECC outpatient clinic. She chooses to see patients because they are often her best teachers in that they help to identify unresolved clinical questions and provide insight as to what is most important to them. Examples of currently funded projects include NIH R01 grants (2021-2026) on “Urinary Cadmium Levels and Risk of Fracture and Bone Loss,” “Long-term fracture risk and change in peripheral bone in the oldest old men: the MrOS Study,” and “Neural mechanisms of gait disturbances as individualized digital biomarker trajectories in preclinical dementia.”  Her range of research interests are broad, ranging from musculoskeletal aging to the gut microbiome to translational work from basic laboratories to robotic labs to older persons. The broad scope of her work is only possible through the meaningful collaborations that she enjoys with many esteemed colleagues and students here at Stanford and other institutions.

Michelle P. Lin, MD, MPH, MS

Dr. Lin is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine whose work is driven by a strong belief that emergency departments can be a key partner in improving care for older adults—in particular, for those who experience barriers to accessing care in other settings due to adverse social and functional factors. Her projects seek to understand how acute care delivery innovations can reduce hospitalizations, enhance care coordination, and improve patient-centered outcomes for older adults. Dr. Lin has received funding from the Stanford Alzheimer’s Disease Research center to evaluate disparities in access to Geriatric Emergency Department Accreditation among structurally marginalized populations. She led the development of the first ED-focused geriatric prescription safety quality measure in her leadership role overseeing national quality measure development for the Clinical Emergency Data Registry and American College of Emergency Physicians. Her NIH-funded research portfolio aims to validate a novel patient-reported outcome measure for emergency care and evaluate the impact of value-based care on emergency care delivery and payment. She was previously a fellow at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation evaluating access to care among Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in advanced alternative payment models. She and Stanford geriatrics faculty Dr. Meera Sheffrin are currently collaborating on her NIH R01 study, “Enhancing the Implementation, Effectiveness, and Reach of Geriatric Emergency Departments for Older Adults with Dementia.”

Michelle Odden, PhD

Dr. Michelle Odden, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Population Health (E&PH) in the Stanford School of Medicine. Her research aims to improve our understanding of the optimal preventive strategies for chronic disease in older adults, particularly those who have been underrepresented in research including the very old, frail, and racial/ethnic minorities. Her work has focused on prevention of cardiovascular and kidney outcomes, as well as preservation of physical and cognitive function in older adults. Additionally, she has ongoing projects in mitochondrial genetics and the proteomic signature of aging.  Dr. Odden’s methodologic focus is in causal inference and methods to reduce biases in observational studies. She has mentored clinical trainees and graduate students, and teaches advanced epidemiologic methods. She and Dr. Christine Liu work together on a NIA funded R01 entitled, “Deprescribing cardiovascular medications among persons with and without Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias in long-term care).  She completed her Ph.D. in Epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley (2009), a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco in Primary Care Research (2011).

Manjula Kurella Tamura, MD, MPH

GRECC Researcher

Manjula Kurella Tamura, MD, MPH is Professor of Medicine with appointments in the Division of Nephrology and GRECC at the Palo Alto VA.  She leads a health services research program addressing benefits and harms of chronic kidney disease treatments in older adults, with special interest in dialysis and hypertension treatment.   Her research utilizes clinical trials, cohort studies, and real-world evidence methods, and has been supported by multiple NIH, VA, and foundation awards.  She serves as an Associate Editor at the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, and on the Advisory committees for the Clin-STAR and Beeson programs in transdisciplinary aging research.  She has a strong commitment to mentoring trainees from the pre-medical stage through the post-doctoral and junior faculty ranks.

Ranak Trivedi, PhD

GRECC Affiliated Researcher

Dr. Trivedi is a clinical health psychologist and health services researcher, with expertise in understanding the relationship between psychosocial factors (e.g., depression and social support) and clinical outcomes of chronic illnesses. She envisions a culturally attuned health care system that is not only patient centered, but family centered and has an expertise in research with informal caregivers and patient-caregiver dyads that are managing chronic and serious illnesses. She serves as the Director of Caregiving and Family Systems at the Stanford Center for Asian Health Research and Education (CARE).  In addition, she is the Director of Education and Training at the Center for Innovation to Implementation at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System and the national Training Director of the Elizabeth Dole National Center of Excellence for Veteran and Caregiver Research.  Dr. Trivedi shares common clinical and research interests with several of the VA Palo Alto and Stanford clinical faculty and their work together promises to improve the breadth and scope of multidisciplinary clinical services for patients and their families affected by dementia. She collaborates with GRECC Associate Director of Education, Dr. Christine Gould.