Dr. Mark Lachs is Director of Geriatrics for the New York Presbyterian Health System, Co-Chief of the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, and a tenured Professor of Medicine at the College. He is also the Irene F. and I. Roy Psaty Distinguished Professor of Medicine.
A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the NYU School of Medicine, he completed a residency in Internal Medicine at The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Geriatric Medicine. In 1988 he became a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at Yale where he also earned a MPH degree in chronic disease epidemiology. He spent four years on the Yale Faculty before coming to Cornell to lead the Geriatrics Program.
Dr. Lachs’ major area of interest is the disenfranchised elderly, and he has published widely in the areas of elder abuse and neglect, financial exploitation, the measurement of functional status, and the financing of health care for an aging population. He has lectured internationally on these topics. Some of his honors and awards include an American College of Physicians Teaching and Research Scholarship, a National Institute on Aging Academic Leadership Award, and a Paul Beeson Physician Faculty Scholarship (the country’s preeminent career award in aging). His many National Institute of Health funded studies include the largest longitudinal study of elder abuse risk factors and outcomes, the epidemiology of resident to resident elder abuse in nursing homes, and the New York State Elder Abuse Prevalence Study. He has mentored dozens of trainees over the course of his career in topics ranging from geriatric oncology, to the elucidation of forensic injuries in elder abuse, to the neuroscience and epidemiology of vulnerability to elder financial exploitation.
In January of 2000, Dr. Lachs became the director of the Cornell Center for Aging Research and Clinical Care (CARCC), a multidisciplinary group of scientists, clinicians, and educators who seek to speed scientific advances from bench to bedside, teach geriatric medicine to physicians-in-training at all levels, and create a trans-institutional community of gerontologists at Cornell.
His service to community and country includes membership on an Institute of Medicine Committee to address the training needs of health professionals in family violence, consultation to WHO on matters related to elder abuse, and creation of the New York City Elder Abuse Center, a multidisciplinary collaboration between academicians and community partners to prevent and respond to elder abuse (www.nyceac.org). He also sits on the Board of the American Federation for Aging Research where he currently serves as president.
The author of a popular book on Aging entitled Treat Me Not My Age (Viking Penguin 2010) he has appeared in multiple print and media outlets including Good Morning America, The Today Show, NPR’s All Things Considered, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.
Dr. Lachs’ greatest passion is practicing and teaching geriatric medicine in the outpatient, hospital, long-term care, and house call setting.