Core Teams

Alissa Bernstein is a medical anthropologist and health policy researcher focused on understanding and improving the assessment, diagnosis, and care of people with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, with a specific focus on primary care in safety net settings. She also conducts research focused on care navigation to support people with dementia and their caregivers and on building palliative care approaches in memory care settings. 

Susan Chapman’s scholarly work focuses on health workforce research and health policy analysis, including transforming health workforce roles in new models of care and payment reform, the long-term care workforce, and advanced practice nurses in behavioral health. Over the past 18 years she has been PI, Co-PI, or Co-I for more than 35 grants and contracts at the local, state, national, and global level. 

Winston Chiong is the principal investigator of the UCSF Decision Lab. His clinical practice focuses on Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, and other cognitive disorders of aging. One focus of his research is the ethical, policy, and health equity implications of alterations to brain function, informed by the experiences of patients with brain diseases and those undergoing new brain-based therapies. 

Also a member of the Administrative Core

Esther Friedman is a sociologist and research associate professor. She also serves as an associate director of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Her research examines how families and communities facilitate the health and wellbeing of older adults. She is currently leading a study for which she is collecting and analyzing new data on the social support networks of family caregivers to persons with dementia.

Also a member of the Administrative Core

Lauren Gerlach is a geriatric psychiatrist and assistant professor. Her research is focused on dementia end-of-life care as well as understanding trends and appropriate use of psychiatric medications among older adults with mental health and cognitive disorders.

Krista Harrison’s research aims to mitigate suffering associated with aging, dying, and grieving by improving policies and models of hospice and home-based care for people with dementia and care partners. She uses quantitative data to examine population-level needs and generates qualitative and mixed-methods data to inform the development of policy recommendations or interventions. She currently serves as co-lead of the Vulnerable Aging Research Core of the Claude D. Pepper Older American Independence Center at UCSF.

Johanna Hickey’s previous research includes supporting the NC Registry for Brain Health, research surrounding care provision in long-term care settings, and the well-being of long-term care direct care workers.

Lauren Hunt is a nurse practitioner and health services researcher with a research focus on understanding the geriatric palliative care needs and experiences of older adults with dementia across care settings. Her research is driven by her experiences as a clinician working with seriously ill older adults in acute care, hospice, and outpatient clinics, where she witnessed firsthand how gaps in current care models negatively impact patients and families.

Soo-Jeong Lee’s research focuses on health effects of occupational exposures and prevention of occupational injuries and illnesses, including evaluation of the impacts of interventions at individual, organizational, and regulatory levels.

Also a member of the Data Linkage Core

Ulrike Muench is a nurse practitioner and health services researcher. Her research interests include the health care workforce, opioid prescribing patterns, and quantitative methods. She has expertise working with large Medicare administrative claims data and numerous large national surveys, including the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) and American Community Survey. 

Katherine (Kate) Possin is a neuropsychologist focused on improving diagnosis and care for patients with neurodegenerative disease. She has investigated the brain bases of cognitive decline, developed novel and practical methods for measuring cognition, and advanced a new model of dementia care. She is a faculty member at UCSF and the Global Brain Health Institute, and is a practicing neuropsychologist at UCSF’s Memory and Aging Center clinic.

Joanie Rothstein is a program manager for NDWS, focused on survey development. She has extensive experience in education and health care. Her skills include strategic planning, policy, partnership building, and designing/evaluating programs to improve health and opportunities for children, families, and communities.

Sofia Sandoval is a public health professional with a background in research and health education. She is interested in efforts to eliminate health disparities among underserved communities, health advocacy, and social justice. 

Also Lead of the Pilot Grants Core

Laura Wagner is a geriatric nurse practitioner, professor of nursing at UCSF, Co-Investigator of the NIA-funded AWARD (Advancing Workforce Analysis and Research for Dementia) Network, and associate director of research at the UCSF Health Workforce Research Center. She has more than 20 years of experience leading health services research in a variety of acute, long-term, and community-based care settings and is the PI of a current R01 (R01AG074227) focused on dementia care training in U.S. nursing homes.

Also a member of the Data Linkage Core and Pilot Grants Core

Elizabeth (Betsy) White is a geriatric primary care nurse practitioner with extensive clinical experience in nursing homes and community-based long-term care. Her research broadly focuses on understanding how frail medically-complex older adults receive health care, and how factors affecting the nursing and primary care workforces impact quality outcomes in long-term care. She has assisted in the construction of large data systems of nursing home electronic health records. 

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

Sheryl Zimmerman is an internationally-recognized research expert in long-term services and supports for older adults, including those living with dementia residing in assisted living and nursing homes. She has received two career awards from the NIH, and been a principal investigator on 60 funded research projects and an investigator on 40 others. She has written five books and more than 440 peer-reviewed manuscripts, is editor-in chief emeritus and senior associate editor of the Journal of Post-Acute and Long-term Care Medicine, and a section editor of Alzheimer's & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions.