For this project, Dr. Jennifer Craft Morgan, Associate Professor of Gerontology, and Dr. Elisabeth O. Burgess, Director of the Gerontology Institute 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 and partner with other key stakeholders serves as advisers to the project.

Project consultants are: Walter Coffey, Co-Founder CCNG and Managing Director WD International; Kim McRae, Co-Founder CCNG and President, Have a Good Life; Rose Marie Fagan, Co-Founder and Founding Executive Director, Pioneer Network; and Joan Carlson, Principal, JMC Consulting.

Georgia State University's Gerontology Institute received a $1.6 million joint grant from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Georgia State Survey Agency to support a three-year training and development project titled "Building Resources for Delivering Person-Centered Care in Georgia Nursing Homes (BRPCC)".

The team will use grant funds to develop a sustainable program model aimed at improving the quality of life of nursing home residents, including those living with dementia, in Georgia by providing important resources and staff development and training to the state's 374 nursing homes.

Supporting nursing homes to achieve culture change that supports person-centered care of all residents requires sustained resources to enable pressed organizations to achieve the essential elements of person-centered care. This project seeks to meet this need by building an infrastructure to resource Georgia’s nursing homes using a variety of in-person and online strategies through four goals.

1. A three-stage needs assessment of Georgia’s nursing homes. This goal will be accomplished through a three-step mixed-method process including a series of focus groups and interviews with nursing home staff and nursing home stakeholders at multiple levels, a statewide needs assessment survey of up to 60 nursing homes, and a series of focus groups and interviews with residents, families, volunteers, and other related informal care partners, advocates and stakeholders working in Georgia.
2. A real-time, web-based information and resources for Georgia’s nursing homes. The intention of this part of the project is to break down information that can support culture change and implementation of person-centered care into digestible chunks that are easily accessible and to provide links to existing resources from reliable sources for further study and engagement by nursing home staff, which includes quarterly newsletters delivered electronically potentially to all Georgia nursing homes, the use of social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), and a dynamic website linked to CMS Georgia’s website.
3. Stakeholder engagement across the state, providing awareness education on culture change, person-centered care, and living with dementia. This part of the project uses a multi-pronged approach to build awareness and educate Georgia nursing homes about the resources being assembled and created through educational events, scholarships for nursing staff and stakeholders, nursing home collaboratives and regional collaborative meetings, and partner team meetings.
4. An interactive competency-based online continuing education training for nursing home staff, residents and informal care partners. Drawing on findings from the needs assessment of Georgia’s nursing homes, and the latest research and best practices, we are developing eleven online learning modules. Housed on our dynamic website, the learning management system will equip staff development coordinators or other educators within nursing homes with interactive content (e.g. facilitation materials, videos, audio-enhanced PowerPoint presentations, role-play and group/pairs-based interactive activities) to provide approximately one hour of facilitator-led continuing education per module.