Older patients who live alone can become depressed.

I had an interest in health policy and a realization that, as an academic physician, one of the things you're always looking to do is to have your clinical interests and your scholarly interests overlap and reinforce one another.

I grew up with a real appreciation about just how wonderful and intimate the relationship is between a doctor and a patient was and the sense that this was a noble profession.

Once I started working with older people, I realized how much I enjoyed the intellectual challenge of taking care of patients who have multiple, complex medical problems.

Older patients who live alone can become depressed.

I realized in order to be involved in health policy, you really had to understand more than the individual patient that we as physicians, are taught to think about.

I realize there are few sectors that can do what philanthropy does, which is look at big problems, take a long term view, try to develop strategies for addressing the root causes and then go about solving them.