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Lena K. Makaroun, MD, MS – Career Development Awardee

Lena K. Makaroun, MD, MS Lena K. Makaroun, MD, MS
Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion
Pittsburgh, PA 


Lena K. Makaroun, MD, MS, is a Staff Physician and Core Investigator at the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion (CHERP), Affiliate Faculty of the VA Pittsburgh Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center (GRECC), and Assistant Professor of Geriatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Dr. Makaroun's research examines health-related social risk factors for older adults with a specific focus on elder abuse. Her current work aims to improve detection and response for elder abuse among older Veterans in the Veterans Health Administration. Her HSR&D Career Development Award project will improve elder abuse risk detection in VA by both evaluating and pragmatically optimizing current elder abuse screening approaches and by leveraging VA healthcare data to identify Veterans at high risk who may benefit from more in depth assessment. To address the complex problem of elder abuse, Dr. Makaroun's operations-partnered research relies heavily on close collaborations with interdisciplinary colleagues from social work, medicine, rehabilitation, law, protective services, and data informatics.

Dr. Makaroun completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania, MD at Weill Cornell Medical College, and MS in Health Services at the University of Washington School of Public Health. Following her Internal Medicine residency and Geriatric Medicine fellowship at the University of California San Francisco, she completed three years of VA Advanced Postdoctoral Fellowship in Health Services Research at both the VA Puget Sound and VA Pittsburgh Healthcare Systems.

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