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History of the DDD

About the Dartmouth Dementia Directive and its Creators

The Dartmouth Dementia Directive was developed by a team at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth led by Megan E. Bunnell, MD, and Robert B. Santulli, MD.

Dr. Bunnell graduated from the Geisel School of Medicine in 2019 and is currently a resident in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, MA.  Dr. Santulli is Honorary Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College. He is the former director of Geriatric Psychiatry and the Dartmouth Memory Clinic at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.

Other members of the DDD team have included Geisel medical students Sarah Baranes, Colin McLeish, Charlotte  Berry, and Marisa Diiorio.  Elder Law Attorney Tim Caldwell of Lebanon, New Hampshire has provided invaluable legal advice. Numerous physicians and other health care providers in the Upper Valley and beyond, as well as many other individuals, have provided invaluable feedback regarding the Dartmouth Dementia Directive. 

This directive was piloted in 2018 in workshops across the Upper Valley region of Vermont and New Hampshire. The directive became available online in January 2019.

The Dartmouth Dementia Directive has undergone numerous revisions since it was first introduced. In 2022, a section on research participation was added to the DDD.  We thank Twisha Bhardwaj at Dartmouth for her significant contributions to this enhancement.

Updated versions of the directive do NOT invalidate earlier versions that have already been completed.

In February 2023,  Aleksandra Stark, M.D. assumed the administrative leadership of the Dartmouth Dementia Directive.  Dr. Stark is a neurologist at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of persons with dementia.