Speakers Bureau

We offer the expertise of our diverse range of faculty and pre-doctoral students to speak on a variety of relevant topics to health professionals, seniors, families and caregivers. We have given community presentations across the greater Detroit area to a cumulative audience of more than 1,000. Below are our IOG Experts on Aging and Health.

Peter Lichtenberg, PhD, ABPP, Neuropsychology

Director of the WSU Institute of Gerontology & Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute

• Alzheimer’s disease, dementias and depression
• Fraud and older adults
• Training home health professionals to identify mental health problems in older adults
• Aging and health disparities (particularly among minorities living with chronic disease)

• Mobility loss and its long-term consequences
• Training OTs to strengthen depression assessment and treatment in older adults
• Downsizing households in later life

• The aging of the population and the demography of older adults
• The politics, economics, and history of growing old in the U.S.
• Social Security, Medicare, and other public policies related to aging

• Dementia and psychiatric epidemiology Div. of Population Health Science and Epidemiology
• Minority health and aging especially in Latinos and Mexican Americans
• Prevalence and treatment of depression

• Success at reorganizing life after adverse health events or normal life transitions
• Preventing and managing infectious disease (HIV, polio) and physical disability

• Family caregiving for older adults, including pain management
• Grandparenting and kinship care

• Retirement security, risk and financial decision making
• Structural and personal impediments to a secure retirement

• Changes in brain structure and function between childhood and young adulthood
• The development of basic cognitive abilities, learning and memory

• Changes in the brain’s structure and function as we age
• How aging affects basic cognitive skills, learning and memory

• Health insurance, Medicare, long-term care, health care reform
• Links between medication non-adherence, health outcomes, and well-being