UPENN SOM || Cultural Competency Medical Education Program || Jerry Johnson, MD

Jerry Johnson, MD

Johnson Jerry Johnson, MD is Chief of the Division of Geriatric Medicine, co-Principal Investigator of EXPORT, a comprehensive center of excellence for outcomes research and training focusing on obesity in minority populations, and principal Investigator of a HRSA-funded Center of Excellence for Diversity Health Education and Research. During the past five years, Dr. Johnson has increasingly focused his efforts on defining and understanding the significance of cultural competence in the doctor-patient relationship (e.g., a study of the effect of cultural appropriateness on adherence to therapy and another of how African American elders define cultural competent care) and evaluating models of cultural competence education. In 1998, Dr. Johnson was awarded a three-year grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation to evaluate a model of faculty and student education in Cultural Competence. From 1998-2002, he chaired the Board of the SHARE awards program of the IOA, a program designed to reward best practices and stimulate new programs among small community-based organizations providing health-related services to elderly persons underserved because of ethnicity or culture. As a board member and immediate past President of the American Geriatrics Society, Dr. Johnson was instrumental in the formation of the Ethnogeriatrics Committee of the Society, which has since developed tools of cultural competence to be disseminated and evaluated in a variety of settings. In an investigative role, Dr. Johnson is involved in several projects related to health disparities that involve community participatory research methods and comprehensive community education programs. These projects are ideal foundations for involvement of faculty and trainees in community based experiences. He is co-PI of Penn's EXPORT Center grant and PI of the EXPORT Community Outreach Information and Dissemination Core. He chairs the Steering Committee of the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion, a joint project of the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh VA Medical Centers. He is a co-investigator of the CHORD project aimed at reducing disparities in hypertension among African Americans and the Population Studies of Health Disparities, a prostate cancer related project. His ongoing study of African American elders aims to determine how they view culturally competent care.