Rollin M. Wright

“I became a champion of Age-Friendly care the moment I learned about the movement at a 2019 national conference. What’s not to love? Age-friendly care is practical, positive, and just makes good sense. As a geriatric medicine educator, the 4Ms (what Matters, Mentation, Mobility, Medication appropriateness) represent for me the most intuitive, practical, accessible tool for scaffolding for learners of geriatric content and how to care for adults over 65. It’s difficult for many providers to appreciate how the health care priorities and needs of people over age 65 are much different than for people under age 65. The 4Ms age-friendly philosophy of care and approach neatly distinguishes the care needs and captures the essence of what makes the approach to the care of older adults unique and incredibly rewarding. I’m all in when it comes to giving rise to an Age-Friendly health care culture. Effective culture change starts at the point of entry into a health care profession and must be reinforced every step of the way in professional development; i.e., effective culture change starts with effective education. What I bring to Age-Friendly Care, PA is expertise as a geriatrics educator and in education design. My goal is to leverage that expertise and find ways to hard-wire age-friendly principles into health professions’ training and clinical approach to older people such that it becomes automatic, second nature, the right thing to do. To echo Dr. Fick, I care deeply about the care of older adults, and I hope to improve care through education, training, and culture change in health care systems and practice.”

Rollin M. Wright, MD, MPH, MS is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Penn State Health – Hershey Medical Center. Dr. Wright has clinical experience in geriatric primary care, post-acute and long-term care, falls and geriatric trauma, dementia care across healthcare settings, and telemedicine. In 2020, Dr. Wright worked with older adult patients in a dementia care consultation clinic where she piloted a process and workflow to do Medicare Cognitive Assessment and Care Planning visits with the goal of improving feasibility and delivery of comprehensive dementia care in primary care practices. Dr. Wright has extensive experience as a clinical educator, specifically in curriculum development, education scholarship, multiple modalities of teaching, mentorship, and clinical precepting for all learner levels in medical education. She has developed curricula for practicing physicians and physician trainees in the areas of dementia care, interprofessional education, and post-acute and long-term care. Prior to Dr. Wright’s position with Penn State Health – Hershey Medical Center, she was an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh from 2005-2020.

PURE Profile

Education

• MD, Medicine, Albany Medical College
• MS, Medical Education, University of Pittsburgh
• MPH, Public Health, Brown University
• MA, Religious Studies, University of Virginia
• BA, Biomedical Ethics, University of Virginia