Charles A. Cefalu, MD, MS, is Chief of the Section of Geriatric Medicine for the Medical Center of Louisiana and Clinical Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine. He graduated from LSU School of Medicine-New Orleans in 1974 and completed a residency in Family Medicine at Earl K. Long Hospital in Baton Rouge, LA, where he joined the faculty as an Instructor. He later served as Assistant Professor and Assistant Director of the program, and through February 1981, he was Residency Director of the program.

In 1982, Dr. Cefalu joined the Tulane University School of Medicine faculty as Medical Director of its affiliated state teaching hospital at Lallie Kemp Hospital in Independence, LA, and as Assistant Professor of Medicine at Tulane Medical Center. In 1985, he entered private family and geriatric practice in rural southeast Louisiana. After practicing in Kentwood, LA, for four years, he completed a combined Geriatric Medicine fellowship and Master of Science degree in Epidemiology at Wake Forest University-Bowman Gray School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC.

After this fellowship, he joined the faculty at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, DC, as Chief of Geriatrics for the Department of Family Medicine and Associate Professor of Family Medicine. During his tenure at Georgetown, he developed medical-student and resident-teaching programs in the department and planned, developed, and directed a Geriatric Medicine fellowship at the Georgetown University School of Medicine affiliated teaching hospital.

Starting in July 1997, Dr. Cefalu served as Professor and Associate Chairman for Geriatric Program Development in the Department of Family Medicine at LSU/HSC School of Medicine-New Orleans. He was appointed Director of the new Geriatric Medicine program at the Medical Center of Louisiana in July 2002. The new multi-million dollar program also includes geriatric faculty slots, a geriatric nurse practitioner, plans for an accredited Geriatric Medicine fellowship program, and additional nursing, pharmacy, and other personnel to coordinate the program. The fellowship will be open to Family Medicine and Internal Medicine physicians who have completed residency or are board eligible or certified in either specialty. The program, when fully operational, will put the Medical Center of Louisiana, affiliated with Tulane and LSU schools of medicine, on the cutting edge of Geriatric Medicine. Dr. Cefalu wrote the proposal for this program, which received high marks with the state auditors in Baton Rouge.

In 1999, Dr. Cefalu was elected to serve as Co-Chairman of the Council of State Affiliate Representatives and the Board of Directors of the American Geriatrics Society. He is the author of numerous regional, national, and international publications relative to Geriatric Medicine and has spoken at local, regional, and national geriatric conferences. He also served as the principal investigator of a phase III clinical study of an investigational medication to treat osteoporosis; LSU was one of 100 international sites that participated in the study.

Dr. Cefalu holds joint appointments in the Departments of Medicine and Neurology at LSU/HSC School of Medicine in New Orleans and in the Department of Medicine at Tulane University School of Medicine. He is board-certified in Family Medicine and Geriatric Medicine.

Dr. Kennedy is Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science and Director, Division of Geriatric Psychiatry and Fellowship Training Program, Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine. More than fifty psychiatrists with subspecialty training in geriatrics have graduated from the program. The training program is closely allied with Montefiore's Geriatric Medicine Fellowship Training Program with shared responsibilities in clinical services, case conferences, journal clubs and research. Since 1998 he has served in a variety of teaching and advisory positions for the John A, Hartford Foundation Institute for Geriatric Nursing, New York University School of Nursing. He has authored numerous publications on late life mental health and has given a number of invited presentations to educational, scientific and public policy organizations in the United States and abroad.

His research has focused on cardiac arrhythmias, the epidemiology of depression and dementia, mental health care in nursing homes, primary care sites and in the community, and novel communications approaches between health care providers. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the National Institute on Aging, the Forchheimer Foundation, the Resnick Gerontology Center, the New York State Department of Health, United Jewish Appeal-Federation, the JE & ZB Butler Foundation, The University Place Foundation, the Irving Weinstein Foundation, The Goldstein Foundation, The United Hospital Fund, and The New York Community Trust have supported his work. He has also received unrestricted educational grants from Janssen Pharmaceutica, Pfizer Incorporated, Forest Laboratories as well as clinical research grants from Janssen Pharmaceutica, AstraZeneca, and Forest Laboratories. From 2005-2007 he was the principal investigator of a project sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study telephone facilitation of depression treatment among primary care patients.

He has served as a consultant to the New York State Commission on Life and the Law regarding physician-assisted suicide and to the Law Revision Commission regarding guardianship procedures in New York State's mental health law. He was also a member of the New York State Department of Health Advisory Work Group on Human Subject Research Involving Protected Classes. He has been a member of the American Psychiatric Association's Council on Aging, and was the 2002 President of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry. For the National Institute of Mental Health he was a member of the Mental Disorders of Aging Initial Review Group and Chairperson, Small Business Innovative Research Program Contract Reviews. In 2003 he was invited to testify before the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. He is a Fellow of the Brookdale Center on Aging of Hunter College, The New York Academy of Medicine, The American Psychiatric Association, and a member of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry. He has received a New Investigator Award from the National Institute of Health, a travel study fellowship to Israel and the United Kingdom from the United States World Health Organization, an Archstone Award for Program Innovation from the American Public Health Association, Annual Exemplary Psychiatrists Award, National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. The American Journal of Nursing cited his Geriatric Mental Health Care published in 2000 as one of the best books of the year on gerontology.

He was also the 2005-2007 chair of the Geriatric Mental Health Foundation, a Washington based 501c3 group advocating for the mental health and well being of senior Americans. In 2005 he was a Visiting Professor for the Geriatric Fellowship Training Program of the National Health Research Institute of Taiwan. In 2006 he was sponsored by The Atlantic Philanthropies to design a Bermuda specific geriatric mental health training program. In 2009 he was part of a seven person Professional Exchange Program sponsored by the Caring Commission of the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York and JDC-ESHEL, The Association for the Planning and Development of Services for the Aged in Israel. Since 1992 he has been listed as one of "The Best Doctors in America". He has appeared on National Public Radio, the Today Show with Katie Couric, and ABC's World News Tonight.

Born in Dallas, Dr. Kennedy is an alumnus of the University of Texas in Austin and the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio.