For this project, Dr. Jennifer Craft Morgan, Director of the Gerontology Institute, and Dr. Elisabeth O. Burgess, Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs in the College of Arts and Sciences at Georgia State University have partnered with the Culture Change Network of Georgia (CCNG).

LeadingAge Georgia, led by Ginny Helms, President and CEO, who received a subcontract to convene the CCNG as the group serves as advisers to the project.

Project consultants are: Cameron Camp, Center for Applied Research in Dementia; Joan Carlson, Principal, JMC Consulting; Walter Coffey, Co-Founder CCNG and Managing Director WD International; Rose Marie Fagan, Co-Founder and Founding Executive Director, Pioneer Network; Kim McRae, Co-Founder CCNG and President, Have a Good Life and Leigh-Anne Royster, Assistant Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Duke University.

Georgia State University's Gerontology Institute has a $1.58 million grant to support training nursing home staff across the state to improve care for residents with dementia. The training emphasizes new trauma-informed approaches and how to reduce the use of antipsychotic drugs to manage residents' behavioral expressions.

The three-year project, jointly funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Georgia State Survey Agency, is led by Jennifer Craft Morgan, Director, of the Gerontology Institute. COVID-19 has had a profound effect on nursing home residents, families and staff. More than 3,000 nursing home residents died of COVID-19 in Georgia between March 2020 and May 2021, representing about 20 percent of the state's deaths due to the disease.

"Attending to the collective trauma of nursing home communities is a first step in equipping the state to reduce antipsychotic use and improve quality of life in these hard-hit residential communities. Nursing home residents living with dementia deserve a highly dementia-capable workforce." ~Dr. Jennifer Craft Morgan