External Advisory Board

Dr. Ashley Jennings is the Department Chair and Assistant Professor of Gerontology in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Bethune-Cookman University. Dr. Jennings’ has an extensive background in higher education and community engagement. Merging her passion for health and serving the community, she focuses on initiatives that provide education and resources to older adults and caregivers of underserved populations. Dr. Jennings’ research has addressed the impact of Historically Black Colleges & Universities, health disparities, social impact, and food insecurity. Her professional affiliations include the National Council of Certified Dementia Care Practitioners, The Gerontological Society of America and The Southern Gerontological Society. Dr. Jennings serves on various community and university boards and is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated®. 

Topics of Interest: Gerontology Education, Caregiving, HBCUs, LGBTQ+

Carl V. Hill, Ph.D., MPH, is the Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer for the Alzheimer’s Association®, overseeing strategic initiatives to strengthen the Association’s outreach to all populations, and providing communities with resources and support to address the Alzheimer’s crisis.

Dr. Hill previously served as the Association’s vice president of Scientific Engagement. Prior to joining the Association, he served as director, Office of Special Populations at the NIA, where he led the development of the NIA Health Disparities Research Framework. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan School of Public Health, where he trained with the Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture and Health (CRECH) and the Program for Research on Black Americans (PRBA). He is an alumnus of the National Medical Fellowships Inc./W.K. Kellogg Foundation Health Policy Fellowship Program and holds a master’s degree in public health from Morehouse School of Medicine, and he received its Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2019.

Eileen Crimmins is the AARP Chair in Gerontology, and University Professor at the Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California in Los Angles.   She co-directs the USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health, the NIA sponsored Biomarker Network, and the Multidisciplinary Research in Gerontology Training Program.  She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She received her PhD in  Demography from The University of Pennsylvania.  Crimmins’ research is in the area of factors promoting healthy aging and healthy life expectancy.  She has received the Kleemeier award for research from the Gerontological Society of America and the Matilda White Riley Distinguished Scholar Award from the Section on Aging and the Lifecourse of the American Sociological Society; and the Taeuber Award for research from the Population Association of America.

Dr. Jennifer Craft Morgan is the Director of and Professor in the Gerontology Institute at Georgia State University. Her research focuses on jobs and careers, attempting to understand how policy, population, workplace and individual level factors shape how work is experienced and how work is organized across care settings. She is a national expert on recruitment, training and retention of direct care workers. Dr. Morgan has led several major evaluation efforts focused on sharing lessons learned, in real-time, to inform and improve model development for practice and education-based intervention work. Her interdisciplinary research contributes to several disciplines including gerontology, health services, nursing, and sociology. She has published in high-ranking journals such as the The Gerontologist, and in top-tier specialty journals such as Social Science and Medicine, Work, Employment and Society, Health Services Research and Journal of the American Medical Association, as well as in more applied outlets intended to reach practitioners.

Dr. Kimberly S. Johnson, MD, MHS is a Professor with Tenure in the Department of Medicine, Division of Geriatrics, Duke Palliative Care, and Senior Fellow in the Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. Her research focuses on understanding and eliminating racial disparities in palliative and end-of-life care for seriously ill African Americans. She has led large national studies of hospice providers and multi-site studies to improve palliative care delivery.  Dr. Johnson has published widely and is nationally recognized for her work investigating how cultural beliefs and preferences and organizational practices and policies may influence the use of hospice care by older African Americans.   She is the Director of the Duke Center for Research to Advance Health Care Equity (REACH Equity).  The Center focuses on developing and testing interventions to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in health by improving the quality of patient-centered care in the clinical encounter.  In addition to her program of research, Dr. Johnson has substantial experience leading research training programs for early-stage investigators as the Co-director of the Duke CTSA KL2 Program and the Research Education Core of the Duke Pepper Center.

Laura N. Gitlin, PhD, FGSA, FAAN, an applied research sociologist, is distinguished professor, dean emerita of the College of Nursing and Health Professions at Drexel University and the inaugural executive director of its AgeWell Collaboratory. The AgeWell Collaboratory oversees Drexel’s AgeFriendly University international designation, and partners with over 80 community-based organizations serving racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse communities involving older adults and families.

Dr. Gitlin is internationally recognized as an intervention scientist. Her research focuses on developing, evaluating, implementing and disseminating novel home and community-based interventions that seek to improve quality of life indicators for older adults and/or their family members. She and her teams have developed many interventions that are used throughout the United States and worldwide. She is also currently developing a digital platform, Plans4Care, that will provide dementia caregivers nonpharmacological strategies tailored to their care challenges. In all of her interventions, she applies a social ecological, health equity and implementation lens to develop and evaluate person-centered and person-directed approaches to support individuals/families within their living contexts using nonpharmacological, behavioral, cognitive and environmental strategies.  Her co-authored book (A Caregiver’s Guide to Dementia: Using Activities and Other Strategies to Prevent, Reduce and Manage Behavioral Symptoms, Camino Books) has been translated in Spanish, Italian, Chinese, and Japanese.  Some of her measures have similarly been translated in other languages and validated for use in different countries.

Dr. Robert Weech-Maldonado, a Professor in the Department of Health Services Administration at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), is an organizational theorist and health services researcher. His research expertise spans a range of areas, including health disparities, cultural competency, patient experiences with care, long-term care, Medicare and Medicaid policy research, and quality and outcomes research.  Dr. Weech-Maldonado has methodological skills in measurement and survey research, as well as mixed methods. He has served in various administrative roles, including Associate Chair for Research, Analysis Core Director of the Deep South RCMAR, and Co-Director of the NSF Center for Health Organization and Transformation (CHOT). His research has been funded by federal agencies and foundations, including the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Commonwealth Fund, the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, the National Science Foundation, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He currently serves as Deputy Editor for Medical Care.

Roger B. Fillingim, PhD is a Distinguished Professor and Associated Dean of Planning and Institutional Effectiveness at the University of Florida (UF) College of Dentistry and Director of the UF Pain Research & Intervention Center of Excellence. His research investigates biological and psychosocial contributions to individual differences in pain, including the influences of sex/gender, race/ethnicity and aging on the experience of pain. Dr. Fillingim’s research has been continuously funded by the NIH since 1994, including a current MERIT award from the NIA. He has published more than 450 peer-reviewed papers and has delivered plenary and keynote addresses at numerous international conferences. Dr. Fillingim serves as the PI of an NIA-funded T32 supporting postdoctoral training in pain and aging. He has also served in national leadership positions, including a term as President of the American Pain Society from 2012-14, and he currently serves as Secretary/Treasurer for the International Mentoring Association.