Congratulations to Dr. Cara McDermott (Geriatrics) and co-PI Dr. Caroline Sloan (GIM) on their receipt of a 2023 AGING Initiative Pilot Award! The 2023 Health Care Systems Research Network-Older Americans Independence Centers(HCSRN-OAICs) AGING Initiative MCCs Innovation Pilot Project Grant program is focused on research proposals that may lay the groundwork for studies that can ultimately transform the delivery, quality, and/or outcomes of care provided to older adults living with multiple chronic conditions. Dr. McDermott's funded pilot project is titled "Developing and Testing COST-MCC: a Financial Toxicity Screening Tool for Patients with Multiple Chronic Conditions."
Dr. McDermott is Assistant Professor of Medicine-Geriatrics and Population Health, and is a Senior Fellow in the Duke Aging Center. Dr. McDermott joined Duke's faculty in 2022 from University of Washington. She has a K23 award from NIH's National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute on deprescribing fall-risk increasing drugs among multimorbid adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Her research focuses on identifying gaps in healthcare delivery and using implementation science to adapt and assess evidence-based interventions. Dr. McDermott works to optimize medication use, improve symptom management, and reduce unwanted healthcare use among older adults with multiple chronic conditions, with a particular interest in improving outcomes for patients with cancer, COPD, or dementia and their caregivers. She is particularly interested in improving shared decision making in this population and medication deprescribing for adults with serious illness. In recent projects, she investigated ways to improve end-of-life care from the perspective of bereaved caregivers and care delivery gaps leading to unwanted healthcare utilization at end of life for patients with multimorbidity. She completed a T32 postdoctoral fellowship with the Cambia Palliative Care Center of Excellence at the University of Washington and a K12 with the University of Washington’s Implementation Sciences Training Program.