On Friday, April 25 in a crowded auditorium at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Dr. Jeremy Walston, professor in the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology, was honored with the 2025 Dean’s Distinguished Mentoring Award. Presented by Dean/CEO Dr. Theodore DeWeese after an introduction by Dr. Nadia Hansel, director of the Department of Medicine, and a lecture by Dr. David Hellmann, Aliki Perroti Professor of Medicine, the award celebrated Dr. Walston for both his exceptional career and his skilled mentorship of multiple people who’ve since established their own successful careers in academic medicine.
As director of the Johns Hopkins Human Aging Project, deputy director of the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology and co-director of the Biology of Healthy Aging program, Dr. Walston’s impact on the field of geriatrics has been wide-ranging and deeply influential nationally and internationally, and includes the development of a popular frailty assessment tool. His multiple achievements weren’t the speakers’ main focus, however. Instead, they talked repeatedly of Dr. Walston’s kindness and generosity to his mentees and all of his colleagues, whose lives he aimed to enrich and improve as much as he aimed to improve the lives of his patients and all older adults. In a lecture entitled “The Alchemy of Johns Hopkins and the Magic of Mentoring,” Dr. Hellmann discussed how the public trust of medicine requires caring, science and justice to deliver a better healthspan for everyone, and then spoke of how Dr. Walston’s work as a clinician, researcher and mentor delivers on this commitment, with a total of 136 mentees, 40 percent of whom are from groups underrepresented in medicine. His colleagues’ and mentees’ respect and love for Dr. Walston and his groundbreaking work showed in the standing ovation he received when the award was presented.
Watch the full ceremony here.
-Katie DePasquale, communications associate, Division of Geriatric Medicine & Gerontology
