Breakthroughs Can’t Wait: Breaking Down Barriers to Care for the Elderly

Nicole Brandt, PharmD, MBA, BCGP, FASCP, of the School of Pharmacy is working to deliver wellness services to older adults in senior housing to remove barriers such as transportation.

By UMB Communications and Public Affairs, as published in the Elm
November 20, 2025

Nicole Brandt, PharmD, MBA, BCGP, FASCP, professor and Parke-Davis Chair in Geriatric Pharmacotherapy and executive director of the Peter Lamy Center on Drug Therapy and Aging at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, is working to deliver wellness services to older adults in senior housing to remove barriers such as transportation.

“We’ve been primarily focusing on low-income senior housing sites or low-income housing sites within the Baltimore City and Baltimore County area,” Brandt said. “In our collaborative work, we are looking at the impact of on-site services, such as medication reviews, immunizations, and blood pressure management, in an effort to improve outcomes that matter to older adults.”

Watch the video below as Brandt discusses her work.

With financial support from the Tuomey Foundation, Brandt and colleagues from four other health-focused professional schools at the University of Maryland, Baltimore founded an interprofessional wellness clinic to provide services and to research best practices.

“We’ve had a course called Aging in Place for over a decade, which is a course that is built here at the School of Pharmacy, but collaborates both with the graduate school and other schools on campus. And that school really afforded us the opportunity to work with our communities, in particular in West Baltimore,” Brandt explained. “We’re currently exploring, working with an area agency on aging and with a housing site and clinical providers through an academic site to build a sustainable model, not just based on clinical service, but also services that help people age in place and address social determinants of health.”

The goal, she says, is not to help seniors just to live more years in life, but to live quality years. Experience has taught the team to focus on what Brandt calls “the four M’s,” what Matters to patients, Medication, Mentation, and Mobility.

“We often think of how we could prevent falls, but we know that mobility is much larger than that. Mobility is getting transportation to get to their doctors. They oftentimes might be reliant on public service systems, such as a public taxi program or an Uber program, or a family member. But by bringing the programs on site, we bring health care to them. And that really is the mantra of meeting our older adults where they’re at,” Brandt said.

On-site caregiving has other advantages, too. Monthly visits build relationships and trust. On-site services include blood pressure monitoring, medication management, vaccinations, as well as basic services like cutting toenails, cleaning ears, and assessing mobility.

“We’re rather a part of their health care team that empowers them, engages them, and in some ways holds them responsible for their own health and makes them more aware of what they can do differently,” Brandt explained.

Along the way, the team strengthens its engagement with a little bit of fun. Annual wellness checkups are scheduled during birthday months and even include special gifts.

But the checkups provide an extra level of awareness and care. Brandt recalled the checkup of a 90-year-old woman who revealed that she had trouble hearing the providers and also her grandchildren on the telephone.

“We were fortunate enough to have a hearing-assisted device with us,” Brandt said. “It was an amplified microphone with little headphones. We put it on, and it was like opening up the world to her. Case in point, little trickles of tears came out of her eyes, and she said, ‘Can we call my great-grandson and talk with him over the phone?’ And I said, ‘Of course.’ ”

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