Dr Gifford is a geriatrician who currently serves as Chief Medical Officer at the American Health Care Association (AHCA) where he helped create the Quality Department and the Center for Health Policy and evaluation in LTC. He currently oversees AHCA’s Long Term Care Data Cooperative, a NIA funded initiative to link EMR data from nursing homes to help improve care. He is a former Director of the Rhode Island State Department of Health from 2005 to 2011. He received his medical degree from Case Western Reserve University and conducted his geriatric fellowship at UCLA, where he also earned his Master’s in Public Health.