The Anna and Harry Borun Center for Gerontological Research

About the Borun Center

The Anna and Harry Borun Center for Gerontological Research was created as a joint venture of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the Los Angeles Jewish Home. Established in 1989, the Borun Center is an interdisciplinary center for applied research that creates, tests, and promotes the adoption of interventions to improve care and quality of life for persons with long-term care needs. The Center's mission encompasses three primary objectives:

1. identify factors that affect the quality of life of frail nursing home residents and others with long-term care needs;
2. develop and test interventions to improve life quality for these populations; and
3. disseminate and foster the use of these interventions through collaboration and publication; and ensure their adoption by providing a system of training and expert support.

The Center's work, designed to help caregivers and providers enhance patient care and improve clinical outcomes, is exceptional for several reasons:

• The Center’s work emphasizes goal directed care grounded in hearing the voice of older adults and their families
• The Center's applied research recognizes the clinical complexity of this population while addressing everyday care that profoundly effects quality of life for frail older adults and others with long-term care needs, including Assessment of needs, Fall Prevention, Safety, Pain Screening, Prevention of acute decline and hospitalization, Quality-of-Life Assessment, and Pressure Ulcer Prevention.
• Center interventions have been incorporated into national assessments such as the Minimum Data Set (MDS) for Nursing Homes, quality measures, and quality improvement activities in both institutional and community settings.
• The Center's validated, reliable protocols serve as easy-to-follow instructions for implementing resident assessments and designing individualized daily care interventions. These protocols enable care teams to readily implement and manage assessments and interventions over time.

Debra Saliba, MD, MPH, is the director of the Borun Center. A professor of geriatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine, Dr. Saliba has a strong track record in applied research to improve the quality of life of frail older persons. She led the national revision of the Minimum Data Set (MDS 3.0) and has developed methods to identify inappropriate transfers from nursing homes to hospitals; researched disaster response and resident safety; developed and tested benchmark quality measures; and examined the relationship between nursing home structure and quality. A nationally recognized investigator, she is the immediate past president of the American Geriatrics Society and current chair of its Board of Directors. Dr. Saliba serves as Deputy Editor for the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society and is on the editorial boards of The Gerontologist and The Journal of the American Medical Directors Association. Center Associate Directors include: Cathy A. Alessi, MD, Barbara Bates-Jensen, PhD, RN, CWOCN, and Lené Levy-Storms, PhD.