As a young physician-scientist, Greg Sachs, MD, was inspired by his own grandmother’s heartbreaking dementia journey to dedicate his career to improving the experiences for patients and families alike.
Four decades later, he’s made remarkable achievements in the palliative and dementia-care fields and has inspired so many others to take up the same cause or pursue their own research passions.
Now, after nearly 20 years of exemplary service to the Indiana University Department of Medicine as its chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics, Sachs has announced he will retire in June. It’s a change that will allow him to spend more time with his wife and family. What will always remain at the school, however, is his legacy as a mentor and his many achievements within Hoosier healthcare.
Sachs is only the third person to serve as chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine since its inception in 1973. Under his leadership, the division grew from 140 faculty members to more than 340, thanks to the development of the palliative care programs, major expansion of hospital medicine and significant increases in research funding.
In 2023, Sachs earned IU School of Medicine’s Excellence in Faculty Mentoring Award. He said he is most proud of the impact he has had on the career development of so many fellows and junior faculty members. Thirteen of his former mentees have gone on to become division chiefs, associate chiefs, department vice chairs, assistant deans or endowed chairs. Fifteen women were promoted to associate or full professor at IU School of Medicine on his watch.
Sachs’s work and many writings focus on ethical issues in dementia care, including the palliative care of people with dementia. He has published more than 155 articles on the subject. Most notable among those writings was his editorial “Dying from Dementia,” which appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2009.
Sachs was the principal investigator for IN-PEACE, a significant randomized clinical trial that reduced emergency room visits and hospitalizations by 50 percent by providing palliative care integrated with state-of-the-art dementia care. Results of IN-PEACE — an acronym for Indiana Palliative Excellence in Alzheimer Care Efforts — were published in JAMA in 2025.
Sachs began his career in Chicago in the 1980s. After attending medical school at Yale University, he returned to the University of Chicago — where he had earned his bachelor’s degree in 1981 — for his residency and fellowships in geriatrics and ethics. He worked on the faculty in Chicago and served as inaugural geriatrics division chief there until joining the faculty at IU School of Medicine as the division chief in 2007.
In addition to his role as division chief, Sachs is also a research scientist for the Indiana University Center for Aging Research at Regenstrief Institute; the Co-Director of the Indiana University Research in Palliative and End-of-Life Communication and Training — or RESPECT — Center; and co-founded the innovative Healthy Aging Brain Center at Eskenazi Health.
His work has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and leading foundations funding research in geriatrics, ethics and palliative care.
