MetLife Foundation Donates $200,000 Grant to Medical Students for Geriatric Training

Yesterday, we discussed the rising demand for physical therapists as the country’s large population of baby boomers continues to age. That said, tough there are many in-demand careers out there outside of the basic doctor/nurse paradigm, there are more career paths within said paradigm than one might think. We’re talking about specializations, and one of the most important specializations around right now is geriatric care. The MetLife Foundation knows this, and has just donated $200,000 in grants to The American Federation for Aging Research to help support its Medical Student Training in Aging Research (MSTAR) program.

“Over the next two decades,” says their press release, “the number of older adults in the United States is expected to increase to 70 million… more than 75 percent of adults over 65 suffer from at least one chronic medical condition that requires ongoing care and management; and 20 percent of Medicare beneficiaries have five or more chronic conditions.” With statistics like that, it’s no surprise that doctors and nurses trained with a gerontology degree could be extremely useful. Elderly patients are susceptible, by nature, to ailments specific to the aging process. Doctors and nurses with knowledge of those ailments and their treatments have the power to deliver a higher standard of care than their untrained peers.

Gerontology degrees are easily found among traditional and online universities; graduates with gerontology degrees, unfortunately, are much less easy to come by. At the moment, the number of practicing geriatricians and adult health nurses hardly matches up to the number that is needed. According to a report from the Association of Directors of Geriatric Academic Programs (ADGAP), “n 2008 there were only 7,590 board certified geriatricians — one geriatrician for every 2,500 Americans 75 or older.” What’s worse, this ratio is only expected to inflate, with one expected geriatrician per 4,254 older Americans by the year 2030. Proper medical training degrees are in order to keep that expectation from becoming a reality.

It’s for that reason that the MSTAR program was created: since its inception in 1994, it has trained 1,350 students as part of its mission to promote exposure to and maintain interest in geriatric care and research. The MetLife Foundation is equally committed to geriatric medicine, having donated $17 million to Alzheimer’s research. The two foundations are a match made in heaven, as both realize: “MetLife Foundation is pleased to support this initiative, which is designed to encourage students to choose geriatrics or gerontology as a profession,” said president and CEO Dennis White in the press release. “This support is critical to ensuring that the health care system is better prepared to handle the needs of a dramatically increasing elderly population in the decades to come.” MetLife’s donation will give 50 medical students the funds they need for the opportunity of a lifetime, to participate in a research and mentorship program alongside experts in the field.

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