Brie A. Williams, MD, MS
Associate Professor of Medicine
Department of Medicine,
Division of Geriatrics
University of California, San Francisco
Medical Director, SFVAMC Geriatrics Clinic
Associate Director – Discovery and the Public, Program for the Aging Century Staff Physician
Overview
Clinical
Research
Scholarship
Brie Williams is a clinician-researcher who is a national leader in assessing and improving the health and functional status of older adults in the criminal justice system. Dr. Williams completed her medical school training and a Masters Degree in Community Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. After completing an internal medicine residency at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) – San Francisco General Hospital program, Dr. Williams became a Clinician Educator in the UCSF Division of General Internal Medicine where she discovered that she wanted to pursue geriatrics as a career. She returned to training to complete the UCSF Geriatrics Clinical and Research Fellowships.
Clinical Activities
Dr. Williams’ primary clinical work is as the Medical Director of the SFVAMC Geriatrics Clinic and as an attending on the Acute Care for Elders Unit (ACE Unit) at the SFVAMC.
Dr. Williams joined UCSF Division of Geriatrics faculty in July 2007 with a research focus on assessing and improving the health of disenfranchised older adults. She soon learned that the criminal justice population has grown and aged exponentially over the past several decades, and that older adults are the fastest growing age group in the criminal justice system. Because of the strong link between age, declining health and cost, criminal justice institutes, policymakers and the media increasingly view the growing number of older prisoners as a healthcare and economic crisis for state economies. Dr. Williams’ research program now focuses most on the intersection between geriatric medicine and the legal system. Specifically, she applies the principles of geriatrics research to address the emerging public health crisis of the aging criminal justice population, to expose policy, law makers and other professions to the discipline of geriatrics, and to teach non-geriatrics healthcare providers how to optimize the care of older adults.
Selected Publications
Dr. Williams’ current scholarship focuses on assessing and improving the health and functional status of older adults in the criminal justice system or of those living in poverty and the intersection of medicine and the law in health policy.
Williams B, Lindquist K, Sudore R, Strupp H, Willmott D, Walter L. Being old and doing time: Functional impairment and adverse experiences of geriatric female prisoners. J Am Geriatric Soc. 2006; Apr;54(4):702-7.
Williams B, Lindquist K, Moody-Ayers S, Walter L, Covinsky K. Functional impairment, race, and family expectations of death. J Am Geriatric Soc. 2006; Nov;54(11):1682-7.
Williams B, Lindquist K, Sudore R, Covinsky K, Walter L. Screening mammography in older women: The impact of wealth and prognosis. Arch Int Med. 2008 Mar 10; 168(5):514-20.
Williams B, Greifinger R. Elder care in jails and prisons: Are we prepared? Journal of Correctional Health Care. 2008;14 4-6.
Williams B, Lindquist K, Hill T, Baillargeon J, Mellow J, Greifinger R, Walter L. Caregiving Behind Bars: Correctional Officer Reports of Disability in Geriatric Prisoners. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2009 Jul;57(7):1286-92.
Williams B, Baillargeon JG, Lindquist K, Walter LC, Covinsky KE, Whitson HE, Steinman MA Medication Prescribing Practices for Older Prisoners in the Texas Prison System. Am J Public Health. 2009 Sep 17. [Epub ahead of print]
Williams B, McGuire J, Lindsay R, Baillargeon J, Stijacic-Cenzer I, Lee S, Kushel M. “Coming Home: Health Status and Homelessness Risk of Older Pre-release Prisoners.” J Gen Intern Med. 2010 Jun 8.
Castillo L, Williams B, Hooper S, Sabatino C, Weithorn L, Sudore R. “Lost in translation: the unintended consequences of advance directive law on clinical care. Ann Intern Med. 2011 Jan 18;154(2):121-128.
Williams B. Sudore R, Greifinger R, Morrison RS. “Balancing Punishment and Compassion for Seriously Ill Prisoners” Ann Intern Med. 2011 Jul 19;155(2):122-127.
Ahalt C, Binswanger I, Steinman M, Tulsky J, Williams B. “Confined to Ignorance: The absence of prisoner information from nationally representative health datasets.” J Gen Intern Med. In Press
Contact
Office Address:
3333 California St., Ste. 380
San Francisco, CA 94118
