Core Teams

Piotr Dworak is responsible for oversight of day-to-day data collection activities in the Survey Research Center at U-M. He brings expertise in national longitudinal household research studies. 

Margaret Hudson is a project manager with NDWS. She brings experience managing a wide variety of telephone and field research studies, especially those of importance to public health and public policy. 

Raphael Nishimura has has more than ten years of experience focused on sampling and survey statistics. His main research interest includes sampling methods, survey nonresponse, and adaptive/responsive designs. 

Ji Qi is a statistician with the Survey Research Center at U-M and provides support for sample frame development of NDWS surveys.

Jarmin Yeh’s research broadly investigates social justice issues that impact the quality of life of community-dwelling older adults, people with dementia, and caregivers. They serve as a co-director of the UCSF Emancipatory Sciences Lab. 

Corey Abramson serves as a data architect, pipeline designer, and methodologist for the NDWS qualitative work. He directs the Computational Ethnography Lab at Rice, where his teams integrate computational social science, data science, and qualitative analysis to address social science and policy questions. Abramson's empirical research examines health over the life course, including large-scale NIH- and PCORI-funded qualitative studies on aging, chronic illness, and dementia care, and an award-winning monograph The End Game (Harvard University Press) on later life.

Ignacia Arteaga is a scientific project manager for the NDWS qualitative work. She helps design and organize the study’s qualitative research, trains and supports the interview team, and makes sure the information collected is high quality and handled with care. Ignacia has a background in medical anthropology and health services research on serious illness such as cancer and dementia, with extensive experience working on qualitative research projects.

Tim Bates is a senior research associate at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California, San Francisco. He has more than 20 years of experience managing health services research projects at the state and national levels.

Dan Dohan is professor of Health Policy, Surgery, and Humanities and Social Sciences in the UCSF School of Medicine. He uses ethnography and qualitative research to understand how the culture of medicine reflects and shapes experiences of aging and serious illness as well as the provision of surgical and trauma care in diverse clinics and communities.

Also Co-Lead of Administrative Core and Survey Design Core

Joanne Spetz is an internationally known expert on the health workforce who leads the UCSF Health Workforce Research Center on Long-Term Care and the NIA-funded AWARD (Advancing Workforce Analysis and Research for Dementia) Network, focused on the direct care workforce for persons living with dementia.