Aagaard Lecture on life’s last chapter

By Claire Dietz
HS News & Community Relations

Dr. Christine Cassel, a leader in the rapidly expanding field of geriatrics and an advocate for improving care at the end of life, will speak the UW next week.

Christine Cassel

Cassel will give the School of Medicine’s George and Lorna Aagaard Lecture at 4 p.m., Friday, May 4, in Hogness Auditorium of the Health Sciences Center. Her topic is “The End of Life: The Beginning of Medicine.” The lecture is open to everyone and will be followed by a reception.

Cassel is chair of the Department of Geriatrics and Adult Development at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City and director of the Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center at the Bronx VA Medical Center. She is a professor of geriatrics and internal medicine at Mount Sinai.

She moved to Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 1995 after 10 years as chief of general internal medicine at the University of Chicago, where she was also director of the Center for Health Policy Research and George Eisenberg Professor in Geriatrics.

Mount Sinai is a national leader in the emerging field of geriatrics and in 1982 became the first medical school to establish a separate department of geriatrics.

Among Cassel’s numerous publications, she is an editor of two textbooks, both in their fourth editions: Geriatric Medicine: Principles and Practice and Ethical Dimensions in the Health Professions.

She also edited A Practical Guide to Aging, published in 1997, and Approaching Death: Improving Care at the End of Life, which came out the same year.

Cassel is a member of the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences; past president of the American College of Physicians, and a past chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine. She also chairs the board of trustees for the Greenwall Foundation and the ethics advisory panel for the Kaiser Permanente Health System. In addition to other advisory panels, she is codirector of the Center to Advance Palliative Care, a program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She has served on several advisory committees for the National Institutes of Health and the Veterans Affairs Department.

The George and Lorna Aagaard Lectureship was established by colleagues and friends after George Aagaard retired as dean of the UW School of Medicine in 1964. He was an active participant in medical school affairs until shortly before his death in 1997. His wife Lorna was a longtime volunteer at UW Medical Center and the medical school. She and other members of the family were present in 1999 for the dedication of the Health Sciences Center’s central (BB) tower as the Aagaard Tower.