“With the first wave of the 78 million American baby boomers turning 65 in 2011, there's a growing need for comprehensive, high-quality, patient-centered care for this aging population. Geriatrics and palliative medicine specialties embrace an interdisciplinary approach. To deliver services to people with complex needs – to get things done – all of our physicians have to see the big picture.”
Albert L. Siu, MD, MSPH
Ellen and Howard C. Katz Chairman's Chair and Professor of the Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, and Director of the Geriatric Research, Education, and Clinical Center at the Bronx VA Medical Center
Albert L. Siu, MD, MSPH, is a champion of the elderly. He is an internist, geriatrician, and health services and policy researcher who chairs with distinction. Mount Sinai is home to the nation's first medical school department of geriatrics and one of the largest geriatrics programs in the nation. Mount Sinai's Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine has been consistently ranked third in the country by U.S. News & World Report.
Throughout a distinguished career that spans academic medicine, research, and government, Dr. Siu has endeavored to improve the quality and delivery of health care for the aging. In 2007, Dr. Siu spearheaded the opening of the Martha Stewart Center for Living, a state-of-the-art, outpatient medical practice serving as a one-stop location for treatment, education, and services.
Dr. Siu has grown the clinical, educational, and research programs of the department. He works closely with leadership, faculty, and staff in the Hertzberg Palliative Care Institute, the Center to Advance Palliative Care, the National Palliative Care Research Center, the Martha Stewart Center for Living, the Bronx VA Geriatric Research, Education, and Clinical Center, and the Division of Diabetes and Aging. Dr. Siu also has an active role in collaborative programs in geriatrics education – including the Portal of Geriatric Online Education, the Donald W. Reynolds Consortium for Faculty Development to Advance Geriatric Education, and the New York Consortium of Geriatrics Education Centers.
Dr. Siu's research has focused on the measurement and improvement of functional outcomes in the elderly. Recent projects include efforts to study and to disseminate system interventions to improve the care for patients with chronic illness. He has published more than 100 original peer-reviewed reports. In recognition of his service, the Geriatrics Task Force of the Society of General Internal Medicine named him the 2009 SGIM Distinguished Professor in Geriatrics.
A dedicated academic, Dr. Siu personally recruited and mentored most of the 16 funded principal investigators in a health services research program that he built from the ground up. He serves as Senior Associate Editor of the journal Health Services Research. He is a former member of the Council at the National Institute on Aging and a former member of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Dr. Siu has also served on several foundation and nonprofit boards.
Dr. Siu graduated from Yale University School of Medicine in 1980 and completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He joined the UCLA faculty in 1985 and held a joint appointment at RAND. He served as Chief of the Division of Geriatric Medicine at UCLA from 1989 until his departure in 1993 to become a Deputy Commissioner in the New York State Department of Health. In 1995, he came to Mount Sinai as a Professor in the Department of Health Policy. From 1998 to 2002, he was also the Clifford Spingarn Professor of Medicine and Chief of General Internal Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Siu was named Chair of the Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine in 2003.