A new geriatric education center is in the works following the donation of a $50,000 subcontracted grant to UW-Eau Claire.

The Minnesota Area Geriatric Education Center at the University of Minnesota has donated the money to help establish a regional branch in the state of Wisconsin.

MAGEC is a federally funded program that seeks to increase continuing education of geriatric treatments.

The new center in Eau Claire will work as a partnership between the university and health care officials in Eau Claire.

The grant will be available in increments of $10,000 through five years and will fund the program’s development.

Assistant professor of health care administration Doug Olson sees the addition of such a program in Eau Claire as wholly positive.

Though the program is just in its beginning stages, already those involved are looking at how to set up the education center.

“We’ve laid out some initial ideas for things we can do,” Olson said.

The center is considering having a fall symposium this year to determine the level of interest for programs.

Robert Kane, a physician and director of MAGEC, said the decision to expand into western Wisconsin was an obvious one. With six geriatric education centers already in Minnesota, “the next logical place to go was Eau Claire,” he said.

Kane said the program has been successful in Minnesota as a great way to educate students and health care workers within their own region.

And now with the number of senior citizens increasing, the need for such education increases as well.

“We’re clearly in an era where we’re going to see a growth in the number of older people,” he said.

Olson also sees increasing numbers of elderly in the future.

“Our students are going out into a world that is getting grayer,” said Olson, adding that increased education of geriatric treatments will be necessary to deal with the increase.

Exactly what the Western Wisconsin Geriatric Education Center will offer is still undecided. Olson said that those involved will be meeting Feb. 9 to give the project more direction.

“One of our tasks is to figure out what are the long term and even middle range goals for educational programs,” Olson said.

When the center is fully established it will be the seventh regional center coordinated by MAGEC.

Kane expects the program in Eau Claire to be positive, as it is in Minnesota.

“I think it’s been enormously successful.”