Terry Fulmer, PhD, RN, FAAN, is President of The John A. Hartford Foundation in New York City, a foundation dedicated to improving the care of older adults. Established in 1929, the Foundation has a current endowment of more than half a billion dollars. She serves as the chief strategist for the Foundation. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and served on the independent Coronavirus Commission for Safety and Quality in Nursing Homes established to advise the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. She previously served as Distinguished Professor and Dean of Health Sciences at Northeastern University. Prior, she served as the Erline Perkins McGriff Professor and Founding Dean of the New York University College of Nursing. She received her bachelor’s degree from Skidmore College, her master’s and doctoral degrees from Boston College and her Geriatric Nurse Practitioner Post-Master’s Certificate from NYU.
Dr. Fulmer’s career-long program of research focuses on elder justice and the eradication of elder abuse and neglect, work that has been funded by the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute of Nursing Research. She is devoted to advancing quality of care for older adults and developed the Elder Assessment Instrument (EAI), which is a clinical screening tool for suspected elder abuse and neglect used in emergency rooms and high-volume primary care settings. Currently, she works with the National Collaboratory to Address Elder Mistreatment to ensure the prevention of mistreatment, or that it is detected and addressed in a time sensitive manner. This program also supports and develops the next generation of leaders in elder mistreatment across the nation.
She was awarded the prestigious Brookdale National Fellowship and she is the first nurse to have served on the board of the American Geriatrics Society. She is also the first nurse to have served as President of the Gerontological Society of America, which awarded her the 2019 Donald P. Kent Award for exemplifying the highest standards for professional leadership in the field of aging.
Dr. Fulmer is nationally and internationally recognized as a leading expert in geriatrics and is also known for conceptualization and development of the national NICHE program and the Age-Friendly Health System movement.
She is a Trustee for the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, Springer Publishing Company, the Bassett Healthcare System, and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine’s Forum on Aging, Disability, and Independence. She was the Chair of the National Advisory Committee for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellows Program, and held board positions at Skidmore College, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, the Geriatrics and Gerontology Advisory Committee for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Advisory Board for Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Nursing. She is one of top 50 Influencers in Aging by PBS’s Next Avenue, the premier digital publication dedicated to covering issues for older Americans. Dr. Fulmer is the recipient of prestigious awards, including the American Society on Aging’s 2017 Rosalie S. Wolf Award for her body of work on elder abuse. In 2016, she received the 2016 Award for Exceptional Service to The New York Academy of Medicine for her distinguished service on the Academy’s Board of Trustees, including as vice-chair and for her active engagement in the policy work of the Academy, especially its Age-Friendly NYC initiative. She has been honored with invitations for named lectureships from noted universities. She has held faculty appointments at Columbia University, where she was the Anna C. Maxwell Chair in Nursing, and she has also held appointments at Boston College, Yale University, and the Harvard Division on Aging at Harvard Medical School. She has served as a visiting professor of nursing at the University of Pennsylvania and Case Western Reserve University.
She is a Distinguished Practitioner of the National Academies of Practice and currently an attending nurse at Mount Sinai Medical Center in NYC. Her clinical appointments have included the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, the Massachusetts General Hospital, and the NYU Langone Medical Center. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, the Gerontological Society of America, and the New York Academy of Medicine where she served as vice-chair. She has authored over 150 peer-reviewed papers and edited 10 books.
As of September 24, 2022
To read Dr. Fulmer’s CV, click here.
To watch Dr. Fulmer’s Gerontological Society of America 2019 Donald P. Kent Award video, click here.
