Healthcare Career Blog, Physician Blogs

MacArthur Genius Grant Goes to Physician/Researcher

Author Healthcare Career Blogger | 09.22.2009

Every year the MacArthur Foundation awards a five year grant of $500,000 to around  20 very talented people. The money goes to individuals who exhibit extraordinary creativity and potential in their work, and allows them to spend more time working and less time fundraising. The awards are often referred to as “Genius Grants,” although the Foundation itself tries to avoid the term “genius,” preferring to recognize the value of hard work, too.

Winners can be U.S. residents of any age, working in any field. Historically, many of the winners have been in the arts — as well as in science and healthcare research.

One of this year’s winners is Dr. Mary Tinetti, a geriatrician at Yale medical school, who has researched falls among the elderly. Physicians who work with seniors know that the risk of serious disability from a fall can be just as high as that caused by a stroke. Dr Tinetti’s research showed that healthcare professionals often regard the possibility of falling among seniors as an inevitability, rather than as a preventable occurrence.

Dr. Tinetti and her colleagues have demonstrated that there are distinct factors that increase the risk of falls among the elderly — factors like muscle weakness, balance problems and use of multiple medications. They also found that by screening for and addressing these issues, doctors can reduce seniors’ risk of falls by about 30%.

It will be interesting to see if a focus on screening and prevention (coupled with the potential financial impact in critical care due to reduced incidences of falling injuries) will affect the treatment outcomes of seniors overall.

More grant winners in the healthcare field:

• Lin He - Molecular Biologist, for researching the role of microRNAs in the development of cancer and laying the groundwork for future cancer treatments.
• Jill Seaman - Infectious Disease Physician, for adapting 21st-century medicine to treat infectious diseases endemic to Southern Sudan and other war-torn regions.

Click here to learn more about the MacArthur foundation’s  2009 winners .

Physician jobs are as varied as the people who hold them. Newer specialties like  hospitalists and locum tenens are changing the way we think about the profession.  And while the general public may think of MD’s as running a family practice or a hospital surgery, grants like these  shine a spotlight on the many physicians who are also working in research.