Photo: Bryan Goodchild
A UMass Chan Medical School researcher is traveling this fall to the Netherlands to spend four months focusing on a project aimed at optimizing medication prescribing in older adults.
Jennifer Tjia, MD, MSCE, professor of population & quantitative health sciences, has been selected as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar for the Netherlands, a prestigious fellowship and unique opportunity to teach and conduct research at Leiden University in Leiden, Netherlands.
“I'm really looking forward to working with like-minded people to help address this difficult issue of improving safe medication prescribing in a broader context, because it affects a lot of people all over the world,” Dr. Tjia said. “I hope to gain a more global perspective on this problem. A major goal is to establish a productive relationship with Leiden University with an eye toward continuing our collaboration after the four months are over.”
Tjia said she is especially pleased to be a Fulbright U.S. Scholar for the Netherlands because her parents were Dutch citizens and she still has a lot of family there.
“My experiences of watching my family members age helped me realize that the Netherlands health care system has a lot of problems that are similar to those in the United States in terms of overprescribing to seniors,” Tjia said.
Tjia will be working with Jacobijn Gussekloo, professor of primary care, and Wilco Achterberg, professor of institutional care and geriatrics, at the Center for Medicine for Older People at Leiden University Medical Center. The Fulbright project, “Addressing the Complexities of Multinational Deprescribing Trials,” explores ways to address the challenges of conducting multinational research on safe medication use.
“Deprescribing refers to reducing the use of either inappropriate or potentially harmful medications in older adults and is meant to address the problem of polypharmacy. Deprescribing has emerged in the last 10 years as a key way to improve the quality of prescribing in older adults,” Tjia said.
Fulbright Scholar Awards fellowships offer scholars unique opportunities to teach and conduct research abroad, playing a critical role in U.S. public diplomacy. Notable awards received by Fulbright alumni include 63 Nobel Prizes, 98 Pulitzer Prizes and 82 MacArthur Fellowships.
The grant provides nearly $20,000 for living expenses and travel. Tjia’s selection as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar marks the ninth UMass Chan faculty member selected for this prestigious fellowship.
