Executive Committee - AgingME: Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program (GWEP)

The AgingME Executive Committee oversees all GWEP efforts and meets on a biweekly basis. It is composed of the two primary academic institutions: The University of New England (UNE), and the University of Maine (UMaine).

Meet the team at UNE’s Center for Excellence in Public Health!

Susan Wehry, MD

Program Director

Susan Wehry MD is a geriatric psychiatrist with almost 40 years of experience. During her multifaceted career, she has inspired professionals, older adults and family caregivers throughout the United States. The former Chief of Geriatrics at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine (UNE COM), she now directs AgingME, a geriatrics workforce enhancement project (GWEP) that she hopes will help create a more age-friendly health system.

Katie Keough

Project Coordinator

Katie joins UNE, Center for Excellence in Public Health, following her work at Gould Academy as an Admissions Associate and Summer Programs Manager, where she’s honed her program management and stakeholder engagement skills. She’s eager to apply her undergraduate education in community health education and to apply her experience managing diverse projects and handling budgets to AgingME, supporting its mission to enhance the health care of older adults through training and education.

Julia Morin

Project Assistant

Julia Morin is the Project Assistant for the GWEP. She graduated from the University of New England in May of 2023 with a Bachelor in Medical Biology. Wanting to explore other interests before committing to medical school, she decided to take a gap year following graduation from UNE. Julia joined the GWEP team in October of 2023, and she feels a strong connection to the grant’s mission. A lifelong Mainer, Julia has seen first-hand the unique needs of Maine’s older adults in rural communities.

Julia is currently enrolled in a Masters of Public Health Program at the University of New England. She hopes to use her Masters degree to continue a career working to improve the health of older adults in rural communities.

Ruth Dufresne

Senior Research Associate

Ruth Dufresne, SM, is a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Excellence in Public Health and the Center for Excellence in Aging and Health. She has extensive experience as an evaluator on state and federally funded programs in public health and primary care settings. She collaborates with community partners to integrate or improve care in primary care and health systems. Ruth’s focus is chronic disease prevention and management program research and evaluation. She provides both quantitative and qualitative evaluation expertise, designs and implements comprehensive evaluations, develops data collection tools such as web-based surveys and interview discussion guides, analyzes and summarizes data, and disseminates findings to funders and partners.

Prior to coming to UNE in 2010, Ruth had a public health consulting practice where she provided evaluation consultation to the Maine Center for Public Health, the Maine Cardiovascular Health Program in the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the University of Southern Maine, Muskie School of Public Service, Maine Nutrition Network. Prior to working as a consultant, Ruth worked for the Maine Bureau of Health (now called Maine CDC) as the Epidemiologist/Program Evaluator for the Breast and Cervical Health Program. Along with other public health positions, Ruth served as a Primary Health Care Coordinator in US Peace Corps in Cameroon, Africa.

Ruth is a Mainer. She is a graduate of University of Maine at Farmington and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Meet the team at UMaine’s Center on Aging!

Lenard Kaye, DSW, PhD

Assistant Director, Research and Evaluation

Dr. Lenard W. Kaye is Professor of Social Work and Past Director of the Center on Aging, A prolific writer in the fields of health and human services and aging, he has published approximately 200 journal articles and book chapters and 17 books on specialized topics in aging including a specialized focus on older adult part-time work and the federal SCSEP initiative, social isolation and loneliness, home health care, productive aging, aging in rural America, family caregiving, controversial issues in aging, support groups for older women, and congregate housing. His pioneering research and writing on older men’s caregiving experiences and help-seeking behaviors, is widely recognized and frequently cited. His recent books include Social Isolation of Older Adults: Strategies to Bolster Health and Well-Being, Springer Publishing Company (2019) and the Handbook of Rural Aging, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group (2021). He is currently the Lead Evaluator of AgingME, Maine’s Geriatrics Workforce Development Project. His research and training projects have been funded through the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Aging (NIH/NIA), Administration for Community Living/Administration on Aging (ACL/AoA), U.S.DHHS, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and multiple national and regional foundations. He is a Past President of both the Maine and New York State Gerontological Societies, sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Gerontological Social Work and Journal of Aging Life Care, and is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.

Patricia Oh, PhD, MSW

Assistant Director, Community Innovation and Research

As Assistant Director for Community Innovation & Research at the Center on Aging, Patricia Oh, Ph.D., MSW, coordinates its Lifelong Maine initiative, which includes providing technical support and programming for the AARP Network of Age-Friendly States and Communities (NAFSC) in Maine, advising AARP Livable about its rural outreach efforts, and supporting the AARP NAFSC nationally. In her role as Co-Director of the Consortium on Aging Policy, Research and Analysis, Dr. Oh studies the impact of policy on the lives of older Mainers. She is a frequent speaker at community events and has been invited to present age-friendly community development and healthy aging at state, regional, national, and international venues.

Dr. Oh obtained a Ph.D. in Gerontology from the University of Massachusetts, Boston and MSW from the University of Southern Maine. As a practitioner and researcher, her expertise is in translational research, program development, evaluation, research, and professional and community education. Since 2012, she has focused on age-friendly community development at the national and state levels, with a particular interest in rural communities. Currently, her research focuses on climate and aging, municipal motivation to join the AARP NAFSC, the impact of joining on the social and service environments, and multi-sector collaborations to advance age-friendly community development, and specifically, higher education’s role.

Based on her research with communities, Dr. Oh has authored more than a dozen book chapters and articles about aging in community and is lead author to the award-winning AARP Roadmap to Livability Series and Rural Livability Report.