LaMantia to head UVM Center on Aging

Here is the announcement from Provost Rosowsky and Dean Morin:

============================================================================

Dear Colleagues,

In 2008, the University of Vermont established the Center on Aging with the support of a $5 million endowment from Vermont philanthropist Lois McClure. William Pendlebury, M.D., now Professor Emeritus of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, was named as the Center’s inaugural director. Over the past more than nine years, the Center on Aging has carried out a number of initiatives aligned with its core focus areas of education, research, social science, policy and collaboration, with an overall goal to improve the health and wellbeing of Vermont’s seniors, as well as support research and training in the field of gerontology and geriatrics.

We are incredibly grateful to Dr. Pendlebury for his leadership in helping to ensure that aging Vermonters enjoy the highest quality of life possible and that our faculty and students have the opportunity to contribute to that goal.

In January 2018, Dr. Pendlebury will step down from his position and we are pleased to announce that Michael LaMantia, M.D., M.P.H., Associate Professor of Medicine and Neurological Sciences and section head of Geriatric Medicine at the Larner College of Medicine and UVM Medical Center, will take on the role as the new Director of the Center on Aging at UVM. Following this transition, Dr. Pendlebury, who is also Professor Emeritus of Neurological Sciences, will continue in his roles as Medical Director of the Memory Program and Director of Neuropathology at UVM Medical Center

Dr. LaMantia came to UVM in June 2016 to head the new Section of Geriatric Medicine  within the Division of General Internal and Geriatrics of the Department of Medicine and to care for patients at the UVM Medical Center’s Memory Center on the Fanny Allen campus in Colchester, Vt. Prior to joining UVM, he worked for five years as an assistant professor of medicine and a research scientist at the Indiana University School of Medicine, the Indiana University Center for Aging Research, and the Regenstrief Institute, and served as medical director of the Eskenazi Health Aging Brain Care Medical Home. Board certified in both internal medicine and geriatrics, Dr. LaMantia received his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and completed an internal medicine residency at University of North Carolina Hospitals and received a master’s degree in public health from UNC Chapel Hill. He then completed a fellowship in geriatrics at University of North Carolina Hospitals and a postdoctoral fellowship in aging at the UNC Institute on Aging. A specialist in the care of older adults, particularly those with cognitive impairment including memory and thinking skills, Dr. LaMantia conducts research on the coordination of care for older, vulnerable patients as they transition across sites of health care delivery. He has a particular interest in the care of seniors in the emergency department and especially the care provided to seniors with delirium and dementia.

We hope you will join us in thanking Dr. Pendlebury for his leadership and welcoming Dr. LaMantia to this new role. We look forward to seeing the Center on Aging thrive and grow in the years to come and anticipate exciting news for UVM’s work in the field of aging in the near future.

Sincerely,

David Rosowsky, Ph.D., Provost and Senior Vice President
University of Vermont
Frederick Morin, M.D., Dean
Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont

=========================================================================

Congratulations, Mike!

- Ben Littenberg