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Dan Gilden Creative Investigator Award 

Background & Purpose

Dan Gilden, CEO of JEN Associates, has led efforts for AAHCM to measure the value of home based primary care. Dan’s brilliance and successful ideas have broken barriers and have allowed AAHCM to publish and disseminate important results on the value of home-based medical care, leading CMS to revise their views on the high need, high cost group. It is AAHCM’s wish to support the same drive, dedication, and creativity Dan has modeled throughout his life, as an investigator.

The Dan Gilden Creative Investigator Award is given to an exceptional investigator for his/her innovative body of work advancing the field of home care medicine. This award recognizes an investigator who has made great contributions to the field of home care medicine.

Eligibility

Nominees and nominators do not need to be current AAHCM members, but should have experience in the field of home care medicine. Self-nominations are accepted. Evidence of creative investigation may include, but is not limited to, the following:

  • Demonstrated creativity and innovation in the field of home care medicine
  • First-author OR co-author of an original publication (not a review article) in home care medicine
  • Poster/speaking presentation on a home care medicine related topic at a national meeting

Nominations Process

The nomination process runs from late spring to early summer and winners are recognized at the AAHCM Annual Meeting in the fall. Check the News feed to stay up to date on when nominations open this year.

The nomination packet should consist of the following materials:

  • Letter of Nomination: This letter should be written by an individual who knows the nominee’s work, and should document the nominee’s contributions and impact. If this is a self-nomination, please document your contributions as they relate to advancing the field of home care medicine.
  • Nominee’s Curriculum Vitae (CV)
  • Letter(s) of Recommendation: Nominator should submit at least one (maximum 2) letters of recommendation from the nominee’s peers, mentors, or colleagues. These letters should not exceed one page.

Award

An award plaque will be presented to the awardee at the next AAHCM Annual Meeting. The awardee will also receive a $1000 monetary award, and a complimentary one-year membership.

Review Process

The Awards and Research Committees will establish a review panel consisted of members from each committee to review applications and select an award recipient.

Past Winners

2023 - Orla Sheehan, MD, PhD

2022 - David Levine, MD, MPH, MA

Dr. Levine is an Associate Physician in General Internal Medicine at BWH and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at HMS. His principal effort at BWH and HMS is in clinical research, with a focus on digital health, the design and evaluation of novel clinical interventions that optimize quality time at home, and the quality and experience of care delivered to adults in the outpatient setting.

According to his nominators, he is an impressive scientist who applies robust scientific process to important and unique real-life problems our society faces. David developed and led the first U.S.-based randomized controlled trials of Hospital at Home that demonstrated that this innovative care model provides high-quality, safe, cost-saving care that provides a better patient and caregiver experience than traditional hospital care. This body of work has helped catalyze a paradigm shift in how we think about caring for acutely ill adults, and he is on a path of changing the way we practice medicine.

 

2020 - Karen Abrashkin, MD

Dr. Karen Abrashkin is Medical Director for the Northwell Health House Calls program and Clinical Call Center, a 24/7 nurse call center that has reduced transports to hospital emergency departments by 80% while improving outcomes and patient experience. Dr. Abrashkin is recognized for her creativity and dedication to improving the field of home-based primary care, participating in a number of learning communities and prioritizing the sharing of information through collaborations, presentations, and peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Abrashkin’s work has informed the growth of HBPC programs in the US and internationally. As an early adopter and investigator of telehealth for home-bound seniors, Dr. Abrashkin helped identify the barriers and facilitators to adoption by older patients and their family members, contributing to the rapid scaling and deployment of Northwell’s House Calls program during the New York City-area COVID-19 outbreak. 

Dr. Abrashkin is a true provider, Innovator, Researcher and Champion of exceptional Home-Based Primary Care.

 

2019 - Aaron Yao, PhD

Dr. Yao is a health policy researcher and Cheeloo Scholar Professor in the School of Medicine at Shandong University. He also holds part-time appointments at the Home-Centered Care Institute and the University of Virginia School of Medicine. His research and educational program “Invisible Patients Global” exists to serve those invisible frail and homebound patients. It aims to improve the availability and quality of home health care in the United States and other nations. Dr. Yao was also an instrumental part in forming the World’s First Congress on Hospital at Home in Madrid, Spain. 

 

2018 - Katherine Ornstein, PhD, MPH

Katherine Ornstein, PhD MPH, is an epidemiologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, Department of Medicine, and the Institute for Translational Epidemiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She also holds an adjunct appointment in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Her research, funded by the National Institute on Aging and the National Palliative Care Research Center, focuses on caregiving over the course of serious illness through the end of life, the epidemiology of the homebound population, and home-based primary and palliative care. She continues to work to help better define, measure and describe the healthcare and caregiving needs of this growing and largely underserved and understudied population. She has conducted research with the Mount Sinai Visiting Doctors Program for more than a decade and in 2018 became the Director of Research for Mount Sinai School of Medicine’s Institute for Care Innovations at Home and the Mount Sinai at Home program within the Mount Sinai Health system. Katherine Ornstein’s impressive record of innovative, creative and critically important research builds on and reflects the legacy of Dan Gilden’s pioneering work in our field.  

 

2017 - Sam Edwards, MD, MPH

The inaugural Dan Gilden Creative Investigator Award was presented to Sam Edwards, MD, MPH.

Sam Edwards is a general internist and health services researcher at the Veterans Affairs Portland Health Care System and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU).  Dr. Edwards’s research focuses on the role and function of primary care in health systems, with a focus on efforts to care for high needs individuals through VA Home Based Primary Care (HBPC).  Dr. Edwards's work on the effectiveness of VA HBPC has been published in JAMA Internal Medicine, the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society and has been presented at multiple national meetings, including as a plenary at the Society of General Internal Medicine.  Dr. Edwards has received a Career Development Award from the VA Health Services Research and Development service to continue research into understanding why, how and for whom HBPC is most effective, and to design and pilot an intervention to improve HBPC site performance.