Lona Mody, MD

Dr. Mody is one of very few internists in this country with an expertise in aging populations, epidemiology, an active research laboratory in microbiology and a translational research agenda focused on vulnerable aging population. She has mentored several junior faculty, fellows, post-doctoral students and residents in conducting clinical, epidemiologic as well as laboratory-based research projects and has had uninterrupted NIH funding since 2003. In 2015, she received a 5-year NIH K24 Midcareer Investigator Award to mentor junior faculty in translational aging, infectious diseases and health outcomes research.  

Her NIH and AHRQ funded work has created a thriving consortium of post-acute and long-term care facilities in SE Michigan interested in developing interventions to enhance infection prevention in a traditionally resource poor setting. In an NIH-R01 study (PI: Mody), her team evaluated a multi-modal targeted infection-prevention (TIP) intervention to prevent resistant organisms and infections in long-term care residents with indwelling devices. This study has garnered national attention and spurred several subsequent pilot projects. Our group (PIs: Saint, Mody) has been awarded an AHRQ contract to implement lessons learnt from this model to 500 federal and non-federal post-acute and long-term care facilities across 50 states in the US.  Funded by another concurrent NIH-R01 (PI: Mody), her team is defining the complex relationship between antimicrobial resistance, caregiver and environmental contamination, and functional disability in post-acute care facilities. In order to understand transmission dynamics within post-acute and long-term care facilities, she is collaborating with other national leaders to evaluate spread of organisms from a resident to healthcare worker gown and gloves. She is nationally active at several research methodology and career development activities at the American Geriatrics Society, Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Geriatrics and infectious diseases

University of Michigan Health participates with most health insurance plans.

Infections and antimicrobial resistance in long-term care, pneumonia in older adults, and quality of care in nursing homes.