Changing the Conversation Topic: Nursing Home Care

Dr. Bowers’ research focuses on frail, older adults and people with lifelong disabilities, in both community and residential settings. She is interested in how public policies, organizational practices and models of care delivery influence quality of care and quality of work life for caregivers. Her interest in work life quality for workers in long term care systems has led her to examine causes of staff turnover, the relationships among organizational structure, organizational culture, management practices, and care outcomes, and to explore ways to improve the effectiveness of staff development. Her work with informal caregivers at home has led to the development of tools to provide anticipatory guidance and support caregiver decision making.

Professor Bowers is the founding director of the School of Nursing’s Center for Aging Research and Education.

Professor Bowers is an expert in qualitative research methods. She serves on the editorial board of Qualitative Health Research, The Western Journal of Nursing Research and The International Journal of Older People Nursing. She is associate editor (qualitative and mixed methods research manuscripts) for The Gerontologist and oversees Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research Resources in the Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Patricia M. D’Antonio, BSPharm, MS, MBA, BCGP is the Vice President of Policy and Professional Affairs for The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) and a board-certified geriatric pharmacist. Trish directs GSA’s policy initiatives and is responsible for developing relationships with organizations in the aging arena. Trish represents GSA on several policy coalitions and serves as co-chair for the Adult Vaccine Access Coalition, president of the board of the Protecting Access to Pain Relief and Chair of the Friends of NIA.  Additionally, she serves as the Executive Director for the National Center to Reframe Aging, the central hub to advance the long-term social change endeavor designed to improve the public’s understanding of what aging means and the many ways that older people contribute to our society. Before joining GSA, Trish served as Executive Director for the District of Columbia Board of Pharmacy and Program Manager for the Pharmaceutical Control Division, where she was responsible for the regulatory and policy development for the practice of pharmacy and served as liaison to the FDA, DEA, and other federal, state, and city organizations that promote safe handling of medications.  She received her Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy from Duquesne University and her Master of Science in Health Finance and Master in Business Administration with a concentration in health care from Temple University. She completed a residency in administration and finance at The Philadelphia Geriatric Center.

Moira O’Neil serves as Senior Vice President of Research Interpretation at the FrameWorks Institute. In this role, she leads FrameWorks’ efforts to interpret and share communications science with the nonprofit sector so it can more effectively drive social change. Moira manages a team of communications professionals and social scientists who help fields of practice frame social issues in ways that have the proven power to deepen understanding and inspire action. She oversees the team’s efforts to synthesize framing research, teach advocates to apply it to strategic communications, and train sectors to unite around evidence-based framing recommendations. A senior researcher, Moira also directs the organization’s efforts to analyze framing patterns in the media and nonprofit sector and writes in-depth research reports on a wide range of topics, including immigration, child mental health, and housing and homelessness.

A sociologist with expertise in how frames impede or advance social movements, Moira has helped hundreds of organizations strengthen their communications capacity. She regularly delivers presentations and lectures on issue framing at nonprofit organizations, colleges, and universities around the country and abroad. And she publishes regularly in the academic press, with articles appearing in peer-reviewed journals including Child Abuse and Neglect, Generations, Qualitative Research, and the Revue Internationale d’Education de Sèvres. Her work has also appeared in USA Today, The Hechinger Report, The Boston Globe, and other publications.

Moira joined FrameWorks more than a decade ago. Since then, she has conducted framing research around dozens of social issues and has led major projects to reframe the public discourse around immigration, race, and criminal justice. She also brings deep expertise in issues related to sexual violence, equity, and equality. Prior to joining FrameWorks, Moira worked as a research associate for the Vera Institute of Justice on projects related to immigration policy and at the Institute for Scientific Analysis on issues related to substance misuse and drug policy. She holds a BA in sociology from the University of California at Santa Cruz and master’s and doctoral degrees in sociology from the University of California at Santa Barbara, where she studied the medicalization of war trauma at the turn of the 20th century in the United States.

Jasmine L. Travers is an assistant professor of nursing at NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing. Her career is dedicated to designing and conducting research to improve health outcomes and reduce health disparities in vulnerable older adult groups using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Her current work focuses on mitigating disparities in appropriate access and use of in-home and facility-based long-term care for older adults (i.e., home & community-based settings, nursing homes, and assisted living). Currently, Travers is the principal investigator of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation four-year Career Development Award through the Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program which she is examining the association of neighborhood disadvantage with nursing home outcomes using large-scale nursing home data and a Paul B. Beeson Emerging Leader five-year K76 Award through the National Institute on Aging which in this mixed-method study she will develop a survey instrument aimed to identify unmet needs that are disproportionately driving avoidable nursing home placements. Most recently, Travers served on the National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine Committee on the Quality of Care in Nursing Homes which on April 6, 2022, released the widely anticipated report titled, The National Imperative to Improve Nursing Home Quality.

Travers has published widely on the topics of aging, long-term care, health disparities and inequities, workforce diversity and workforce issues, vaccinations, and infections. She has presented her work at regional and national health services research, gerontological, nursing, and public health conferences.

Prior to joining the faculty at NYU, Travers completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the National Clinician Scholars Program at Yale University and a T32-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the New Courtland Center for Transitions and Health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.

Travers received her Ph.D. at Columbia University School of Nursing, MHS at Yale University, MSN in Adult-Gerontological Health at Stony Brook University, and BSN at Adelphi University.