University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston
Rafael Samper-Ternent attended medical school at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, Colombia, where he also did his Residency in Internal Medicine and Fellowship in Geriatrics. He completed his PhD in Health Services Research at The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston. He is an Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine and Geriatrics and the Sealy Center on Aging at UTMB. He has a Diversity Supplement to examine factors that affect well-being and healthcare utilization among Hispanic couples where one of the members has dementia. He is also Co-PI for a pilot study funded by the NIA IMPACT Collaboratory to adapt the Patient Priorities Care Approach for Hispanics with multiple chronic conditions and dementia. He is also a Co-Investigator, Co-Chair for the Clinical Trial Sites Committee and Site Project Manager for the DCARE Study, a pragmatic clinical trial designed to compared models of care for persons with dementia and their caregivers. He is Co-Investigator in the Mexican Health and Aging Study and a grant examining life-course factors related to onset of dementia among older Mexican adults. He has published 40 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals, 10 as first author or senior author and 30 as co-author. His main areas of interest are improving outcomes for underrepresented older adults with dementia and their family caregivers, and improving outcomes for older adults with multiple chronic conditions, especially Hispanic older adults.