Ula Y. Hwang, MD, MPH

I am an emergency physician and researcher passionate about improving emergency care for older adults and persons living with dementia.  Much of this stemmed from my experiences 20 years ago when I saw that crowded conditions in the ED affected the way we were able to care for patients during emergencies. I saw older patients as a vulnerable population in the midst of this crowding and our fast-paced and often hectic environment of the ED.  Thus, my career has been dedicated to advocating, studying, and generating evidence of best emergency practices to improve the care and outcomes for our Geriatric population.

I have co-led the development of the 2014 Geriatric ED Guidelines that are endorsed by national EM and Geriatrics organizations and are the basis for ACEP’s Geriatric ED Accreditation program. I currently co-PI of the Geriatric ED Collaborative (GEDC), a national implementation program supported by the John A. Hartford Foundation to educate and evaluate geriatric emergency care, and MPIs the National Institute on Aging Geriatric Emergency care Applied Research (GEAR) infrastructure networks that focused on supporting the optimization of emergency care for older adults and persons living with dementia.

For fun, I enjoy long walks with my husband, vacations with the kids and our travel gang families, taste-testing the best restaurants in new cities.