Aging Can Get Complicated

Dr. Nana Yaw Adu-Sarkodie is a board-certified Family Medicine physician and fellowship-trained geriatrician. A geriatrician specializes in caring for older adults, but the work isn’t simply about treating diseases that happen later in life. Rather it is about asking a different question: not just what disease does this person have, but how is this person living, and what can help them live as well as possible? With more than 15 years caring for older adults across homes, clinics, and long-term care, he currently serves as a Medical Director for a Geriatric Clinic in West Baltimore, guiding interdisciplinary teams that help medically complex older adults age in place. He previously served for almost 10 years as Deputy Director for Geriatrics and Extended Care at the VA Maryland Health Care System and holds an MPH in Population and Family Health from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

He is also Co-Founder of Y & M Health Solutions, which provides consultative support to individuals, families, and organizations; helping people navigate aging and helping organizations rethink their own structures by understanding the individual experiences within them, and how those experiences can lead to collective success. Most recently he helped to create the Aging Navigation Circle, a monthly space for adults 55 and older and their families to understand what’s changing, prepare for what’s next, and to navigate aging with confidence. This space was created because he kept seeing the same pattern: people and families forced to learn about aging in the middle of a crisis, rather than before one. The Circle was built to facilitate collective understanding.

His approach to health and healthcare is grounded in something that transcends medicine itself: the Adinkra symbol Aya, the fern, which speaks to endurance, resourcefulness, and the ability to withstand hardship and thrive. It’s a fitting emblem for his belief that people remain viable at every age, and can live full, dignified lives at every stage, especially as they grow older.

Outside of his work, Dr. Adu-Sarkodie is a husband and father of two girls. He serves as an Affiliate Assistant Medical professor at his alma mater, The CUNY Medical School formerly The Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education at the City College of New York, where he provides lectures on Geriatrics in Primary Care to medical students. He also enjoys photography, cooking, is an unapologetic science fiction fan, and a longtime comic-book collector. These are all reminders that the people he cares for, like himself, are more than any one chapter of their story.