Dr. Michi Yukawa is a Clinical Professor in the Division of Geriatrics and the Post Acute Care Medical Director at the Jewish Home & Rehabilitation Center (JHRC).

Dr. Yukawa is a graduate of Brown University School of Medicine, and she completed Internal Medicine residency at Miriam Hospital, one of the teaching hospital for Brown University. In addition, Dr. Yukawa holds a Masters in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. She practiced primary care medicine in Boston before she participated in a Geriatric Medicine Fellowship at University of Washington. Dr.Yukawa was a member of the faculty in the Division of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine at the University of Washington from 2000-2010. Dr. Yukawa joined the Division of Geriatrics of UCSF in October 2010 as an Associate Professor. She is interested in teaching and improving the care of older adults particularly around nutrition and prevention of malnutrition and weight loss.

Clinical
As Post Acute Medical Director at JHRC, Dr. Yukawa will provide physician leadership for implementing a new patient care partnership in which UCSF geriatricians provide the clinical care for patients discharged from UCSF Health to JHRC’s short-stay rehabilitation unit. She also will provide medical directorship for the entire 120-bed short-stay rehabilitation unit, known as the Friedman Pavilion. She will work with UCSF hospitalists and primary care to enhance the quality of the transition process for UCSF patients from hospital to JHRC and back to UCSF primary care and provide education for JHRC staff in geriatrics and quality indicators. She also will facilitate implementation science research into JHRC’s clinical environment, including integrating Geriatrics and Geriatric-Palliative Care fellows into research and quality improvement projects.

Research
Dr. Yukawa’s research interests include improving nutrition, preventing weight loss and improving perioperative care of older adults. She conducted several clinical trials while she was at University of Washington and she hopes to collaborate with others to pursue her research interests at UCSF. Her educational interests revolve around chronic illness management of geriatric patients in various settings: outpatient, inpatient and skilled nursing facility. She leads the geriatric section of Life Cycle course to educate second year medical students about geriatric syndromes and management of older adults. In addition, she directs the fourth year medical student elective in geriatric medicine. She hopes to collaborate with educators within the Division of Geriatrics and other department to develop innovative methods to teach medical students, residents and geriatric fellows about management of geriatric patients.