COGNITION - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Member of the Project Team
- Co - Principal Investigator
Annette L. Fitzpatrick, PhD, is the Co-Principal Investigator of the CDC project which provides funding for Cognition in Primary Care. She is an epidemiologist and Research Professor in the Departments of Family Medicine, Epidemiology, and Global Health. She has been working in the field of aging for over 30 years with a focus on dementia and cognitive function as well as cardiovascular disease (CVD) and its risk factors. She has provided leadership to over 35 NIH/CDC-sponsored studies over her career and considers CPC to be the most critical in terms of its impact on older adults.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Member of the Project Team
Barak Gaster, MD, is a dementia expert and primary care physician with more than 20 years experience as a clinician, teacher, and leader in clinic process improvement. A professor of medicine and a member of the leadership committee selected to develop the latest iteration of the CDC's national Healthy Brain Roadmap, he is also a co-investigator at the UW Alzheimer's Research Center, a member of the Hastings Center Workgroup on dementia, and is the author of the Dementia Directive which has been downloaded 150,000 times and been featured in the New York Times and on NPR.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Project Team
- Co - Investigator
Basia Belza, PhD, RN, FAAN, FGSA, is the de Tornyay Endowed Professor in Aging at the UW School of Nursing and an Adjunct Professor at the School of Public Health. As an Investigator at the Health Promotion Research Center she served as lead of the CDC-funded Healthy Brain Research Network. Her program of research includes a focus on the dissemination and implementation of evidence- and community-based health promotion programs for older adults.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Project Team
- Co - Principal Investigator
Jaqueline Raetz, MD, is the Co-Principal Investigator of the CDC project which provides funding for Cognition in Primary Care. She is an associate program director at the University of Washington Family Medicine Residency. As a geriatrics-trained family physician she has been teaching residents, fellows, and medical students how to care for older patients for over 15 years. In addition to her outpatient Family Medicine clinical practice at Harborview, she provides nursing home care through Harborview Post-Acute Care Services and inpatient palliative care at UW Medical Center.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Project Team
- Co - Investigator
Joshua Liao, MD, MSc, is an internal medicine physician at UW where he serves as the Associate Chair for Health Systems in the Department of Medicine and faculty in the schools of School of Medicine and Public Health. He is also the enterprise-level Medical Director of Payment Strategy at UW Medicine, and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics in the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Monica Zigman Suchsland, MPH, PhD candidate, is a Research Scientist in the UW Medicine Department of Family Medicine and a PhD candidate in the UW School of Public Health Department of Epidemiology. She has worked extensively managing health research projects ranging from field studies to clinical trials. Her research interests include diagnostics, clinical evaluation, and data driven methods in primary care. Her dissertation research aims to improve understanding of the clinical course of concussion and time to recovery after a concussion injury.
Sarah McKiddy is a PhD student at the University of Washington School of Nursing and the de Tornyay Center for Healthy Aging Pre-doctoral Scholar. Her research interests include cognitive health, the intersectionality of ageism, and music-based interventions for individuals living with dementia and their care partners. Her background as a professional musician and educator combined with her training as a nurse catalyzed and influenced her pathway toward researching the intersections between music and health.
Job Titles:
- Adjunct Professor at the School of Public Health
- Professor in Aging at the UW School of Nursing