Richard Besdine, MD has devoted his career to developing and advancing geriatrics and palliative medicine through university-based and public health care policy work; he has developed and managed research, health care delivery systems and educational programs on aging at a university base, and served as a senior healthcare executive in the Federal government. He is professor of medicine and of health services policy and practice at Brown University. From 2000 to 2020, he served as director of the Division of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine in the Department of Medicine, chief of geriatrics for Lifespan, and first Greer Professor of Geriatric Medicine at Alpert Medical School of Brown University; and as director of the Center for Gerontology and Healthcare Research at the Brown School of Public Health. He served as interim dean of medicine and biological Sciences of Brown Medical School from 2002-2005. He is emeritus from the Board of Directors of Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island – the State’s Medicaid plan.
Dr. Besdine spent 1995-1999 in federal service; he was first chief medical officer and director of the Health Standards and Quality Bureau for the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA, now CMS), responsible for setting standards, inspection, enforcement, and improvement of health care quality for the more than 70 million Medicare beneficiaries and Medicaid recipients.
A graduate of Haverford College and of University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, he trained in internal medicine, infectious diseases and immunology at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Besdine trained in geriatrics at the University of Glasgow with Sir Ferguson Anderson.
Terrie Fox Wetle, Ph.D. is a professor of Health Services, Policy and Practice at Brown University. She served as the inaugural dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, having been an associate dean of medicine for public health and public policy at Brown’s Alpert Medical School. From 1995-2000, Dr. Wetle was the deputy director of the National Institute on Aging at the NIH. Prior to NIA, Dr. Wetle served as director of the Braceland Center for Mental Health and Aging and associate professor of medicine at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine; associate director of the Division on Aging and assistant professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School; and director of the Program in Long Term Care Administration and assistant professor of epidemiology and public health at Yale University.
She worked in government as director of an Area Agency on Aging in Oregon, and as a social policy analyst at the Administration on Aging, Department of Health, Education and Welfare. She is past president of the American Federation for Aging Research and past president of the Gerontological Society of America. She sits on the governing council of the International Association for Gerontology and Geriatrics and has had appointments on the NIH Council of Councils and the National Advisory Council on Aging for NIA.
Dr. Wetle’s career-long commitment to education and research about end of life began in the 1970s when she taught her University’s first course on Death and Dying. Her research has focused on patient preferences at the end of life, quality of aging services and advance directives.
Honors include: the DHHS Secretary’s Distinguished Service Citation; American Society on Aging President's Award; Gerontological Society of America’s Donald P. Kent Award; American Federation Irving S. Wright Award of Distinction; and an American Public Health Association Lifetime Achievement Award. Honorary degrees include a Docteure Honoris Causa from the University of Geneva, School of Medicine, Switzerland; and a Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, Johnson and Wales University.