I am a general internist and clinician-investigator in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. I am also a staff physician and investigator in the Division of General Internal Medicine and the Center for the Study of Healthcare Innovation, Implementation, and Policy (CSHIIP) at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System. My research focuses on multimorbidity (multiple coexisting chronic conditions), including its measurement, management, prevention, prognosis, and policy implications in aging and older adults. My long-term goal is to identify risk factors associated with multimorbidity and translate these into interventions to prevent multimorbidity progression and complications such as disability and preventable hospital admissions and ED visits. Closely related to this goal, I seek to understand how multimorbidity influences clinical outcomes, healthcare cost, and policy. I recently conducted a focused set of projects to better characterize the growing population of adults with multimorbidity, including the development and validation of a multimorbidity-weighted index (MWI), a person-centered measure that weights chronic conditions based on their impact on physical functioning. I am funded by a career development award (K23) from the National Institute on Aging and pilot grants to develop and validate the index in administrative data and increase its application for clinical use.