Dr. Sidney M. Stahl served as the Chief of the Individual Behavioral Processes Branch at the National Institute on Aging (NIA), National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 1996 until his retirement in 2012. At NIA, Dr. Stahl was directly responsible for promoting diversity in aging research by creating the Resource Centers for Minority Aging Research (RCMAR) program and for building NIA’s research programs on elder abuse, long-term care, caregiving, and behavioral medicine.Â
Stahl worked to foster research programs to identify, prevent, and treat elder abuse. He serves as Research Consultant to the U.S. Department of Justice on research issues related to elder abuse and has served as Expert Consultant to the U.S. Administration for Community Living/Administration on Aging. In the latter capacity, he implemented the portion of the Affordable Care Act that created the Cabinet-level Elder Justice Coordinating Council which coordinates activities throughout the federal government on elder abuse, neglect, and financial exploitation.
The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) chose Dr. Stahl as the 2012 recipient of its most prestigious award, the Donald P. Kent Award. This distinguished honor is given annually to a GSA member who best exemplifies the highest standards for professional leadership in gerontology through teaching, service, and interpretation of gerontology to the larger society.
Prior to his career at NIH, Dr. Stahl served as a professor of medical sociology and social gerontology at Purdue University for over 20 years. He published three books and over 100 articles and chapters on the health of older Americans, social factors in chronic disease, minority aging health, and statistical methods for the measurement of health in aging populations. He served as consultant to the World Health Organization in Geneva Switzerland and Beijing China and as a Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University in England.