Welcome to Collective Conversations, a series of discussions aimed at highlighting people and groups working to improve health through better health care systems. I’m your host, Joy Lee, a program manager for the Value and Systems Science Lab led by Dr. Joshua Liao who is a physician and associate chair for Health Systems in the Department of Medicine at the University of Washington.

In today’s conversation, you'll hear from Dr. Barak Gaster.

Barak Gaster is a professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine where he’s been a primary care provider at UWMC-Roosevelt for more than 20 years. For the past 7 years he has focused on improving care for dementia, leading to the development of the Cognition in Primary Care Program. He’s also the primary care liaison for the UW Memory and Brain Wellness Center, a co-investigator for the UW Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, a member of the Washington State Dementia Action Collaborative, and is on the national committee which is creating the CDC’s next version of the Healthy Brain Initiative. In addition to developing better ways to evaluate cognition, he’s been focused on improving advance care planning for dementia, helping people express preferences and goals for care with the goal of getting better care. He helped develop the Dementia Directive which has been downloaded more than 150,000 times and been featured in the New York Times and on NPR.