Assessing the quality of nursing home care has historically been a challenging and complex process that considers only a portion of the factors involved—generally, clinical indicators reported by the nursing homes themselves. UMBC researchers are collaborating on a new measure of nursing home quality that combines care experiences with clinical data. And they are doing it with funding from a new UMBC program designed to support novel research across different teams. 

Principal investigator Roberto Millar M.A ’19, sociology, Ph.D. ’20, gerontology, who is a policy analyst advanced at The Hilltop Institute, is collaborating on the study with Nancy Kusmaul, associate professor of social work, and Ian Stockwell, associate professor of information systems. Their goal is to create “a more complete measure that nursing homes will be able to use to evaluate how they’re doing to improve the resident experience,” says Kusmaul. 

The researchers will, for the first time, combine data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Care Compare database and results of the Maryland Family Satisfaction Survey. The survey assesses the experiences of family members with loved ones in Maryland nursing homes and, Kusmaul notes, offers a unique approach to measuring quality of care.

“There are no national measures of nursing home quality that consider that side of things,” she explains. “When we think about what quality is and what are the outcomes that we’re measuring, we have to think about the different perspectives of what is good nursing home care.” 

Creating a new national model

On a national level, the typical approach to measuring nursing home care focuses on clinical indicators that are measured quantitatively, Millar notes. This includes factors such as number of hospitalizations, vaccination rates, and staff training. It does not include more qualitative data that considers the experiences of people in nursing homes or their families. Maryland is one of only three states that assesses family satisfaction. 

“What’s key here is bringing these two approaches together to see if these quantitative measures from the federal approach are actually predictive of family satisfaction across more qualitative domains,” says Millar. 

“What we’re talking about is perhaps scaling this collection of qualitative data to a national level that does not exist right now,” says Stockwell. “We want to better measure quality of care to drive changes in the nursing home industry that would best help the patients.”

The team hopes to eventually create a more robust technical infrastructure to capture this data. Eventually, they might be able to utilize machine learning and artificial intelligence to better match prospective care recipients with the most suitable care facility. 

Funding new collaborations 

The nursing home study was funded through UMBC’s Office of Research Development via the new CIDER (Center and Institute Departmentally-Engaged Research) program. This internal funding opportunity brings together researchers from different disciplines and types of research units across UMBC. 

At UMBC, a large volume of research and creative activity (RCA) happens within academic departments and colleges as well as outside of them, in a range of research centers and institutes. In fiscal year 2022, centers and institutes outside of academic departments were responsible for 48.6% of UMBC’s sponsored RCA expenditures ($42.3 million), with most of the rest falling within the departments. But while both groups contribute substantially, they don’t often receive shared project funding to collaborate. 

CIDER was designed to increase collaboration between these groups. In this first round, four research teams were each awarded a $50,000 CIDER grant for 18 months to pursue their studies. 

In addition to Millar’s team, the other three winning proposals include research across a very broad range of fields: 

• “Visualizing the Factors in K-12 Education Success” is led by Lee Boot, director of UMBC’s Imaging Research Center (IRC), with co-investigator Amy Tondreau, assistant professor of education, and Anita Komlodi, associate professor of information systems and associate director of the IRC. 
• “Harnessing the Power of Machine Learning to Discover What Powers Distant Galaxies” is led by Antara Basu-Zych, the Center for Research and Exploration in Space Science & Technology II, with co-investigator Sanjay Purushotham, assistant professor of information systems, and Kristen Garofali, NASA. 
• “Model Development for Polarimetric Remote Sensing of Clouds in the Thermal Infrared” is led by Xiaoguang Xu, Goddard Earth Sciences Technology and Research II, with co-investigator Vanderlei Martins, professor of physics, and Jie Gong, NASA.

Don Engel, associate vice president for research development and director of the Center for Space Sciences and Technology (CSST), helped to create CIDER. “We wanted to find a systemic way to make sure that everyone could draw value from being close to other researchers within the institution,” says Engel. “In addition to that, we wanted to make sure that research center faculty have internal funding opportunities that better connect them with the rest of the university. This better integrates them into the university and also makes sure that they have more opportunities to both contribute to and draw from the university’s other strengths and dimensions.”

Additional CIDER program creators include Cynthia Woodcock, director of The Hilltop Institute and Christine Mallinson, professor of language, literacy, and culture (LLC) and director of the Center of Social Science Scholarship. Kara Seidel ’18, psychology, an LLC doctoral student, also provided support in the program’s creation. 

Program founders hope that CIDER can help kick-start successful partnerships that generate additional external support and grow far into the future. “We were really excited to see how much interest we had in this program,” says Engel. “We hope that our researchers can draw from each other’s expertise and this funding opportunity can enable the awardees to get subsequent grant funding.” 

Ian Stockwell finds this kind of collaborative effort essential and can already see its growing impact. “It’s important for UMBC to facilitate the interaction of faculty across departments and in research centers. We are grateful for this opportunity in particular.”

Meet Karndeep Singh ’18, M26, biochemistry and molecular biology, a graduate student at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in the biochemistry and molecular biology Ph.D. program. Singh is conducting his thesis research in Dr. Michael Summers’ laboratory at UMBC. Outside of research, he’s been involved with UMBC’s Chapter of Young Alumni (CYA), serving as the president since summer of 2020. Singh says he’s found his way at UMBC through involvement in research, residential life, and networking with alumni at UMBC.

Q: What’s the one thing you’d want someone who hasn’t joined the UMBC community to know about the support you find here?

A: UMBC will push you to your limits and help you realize that you were meant to break those limits. UMBC will challenge you academically, but you have so much support here as everyone wants you to succeed—it is just a matter of asking for help which can be the hardest first step to take. Do not shy away from asking for help; there is a very high likelihood that others around you need help, too.

Q: Tell us about someone in the community who has inspired you or supported you, and how they did it.

A: There has been a village of people at UMBC who have helped me succeed. My advisors in the Meyerhoff Scholars Program guided me as a student by helping me to find research opportunities during my time at UMBC and post-UMBC. Bethany Birago ’99 (emergency health services) taught me and demonstrated all of the professionalism I would need in healthcare and in the workplace.

Last and certainly not least, I met my amazing partner at UMBC—Aishwarya Iyer ’18, M26, biochemistry and molecular biology. She has been one of the hardest workers I have ever seen and continues to inspire me to work harder to have a positive impact at UMBC, in the Baltimore community, and in this world.

Q: Tell us about what you love about your academic program or an organization you’re involved in.

A: I joined Residential Life as a resident assistant (RA) during my sophomore year and ultimately became lead RA in Potomac Hall during my senior year. Every year, the staff members I worked with acted as a family, especially my staff during my time in Potomac Hall. We would hold Thanksgiving dinners together, compete with the other residential halls during our summer and winter trainings, game nights, movie nights, etc. At every moment, I felt loved by my staff and knew that any of them would support me if I needed anything at all.

Q: Where are you currently in your studies, and what do you enjoy most about what you’re doing now?

A: Currently, I am a 4th year Ph.D. candidate in the biochemistry and molecular biology program at the University of Maryland, School of Medicine. I conduct my thesis research in Dr. Michael Summers’ HHMI laboratory at UMBC where my project is focused on investigating how the HIV-1 RNA genome interacts with cap-dependent translational machinery. One of the greatest parts of my role is having the opportunity to mentor undergraduate students as they conduct undergraduate research in our laboratory. My role as their mentor is not to persuade them to do a career in research but teach them how to conduct good science and carry the skills they learn in the laboratory to their future endeavors.

Q: What brought you to UMBC in the first place? Tell us about your primary WHY, and how it led you to UMBC.

A: I attended Western School of Technology and Environmental Science (Western Tech) where a number of our high school events were held at UMBC. I learned about UMBC’s reputation by speaking to current UMBC students and I knew that this was the school to attend if I ultimately wanted a career in STEM. The school was known for its diversity and its community—values that were instilled into me by attending Western Tech and I knew that UMBC embodied those same values and would uphold them.

Q: Tell us about the people who helped you grow at UMBC, and why their HOW made such a difference to you.

A: During my undergraduate experience, I had a couple of research opportunities, but I did not feel confident to succeed in graduate school. After graduating from UMBC in May 2018, I took a gap year where I joined Dr. Michael Summers’ laboratory as a laboratory technician to supervise and mentor Dr. Joshua Brown’s (Ph.D. ’18, biochemistry) group as he returned to medical school to complete his last two years of his M.D.-Ph.D. program at UMSOM. My partner, Aishwarya Iyer, worked for Dr. Brown and trained me for a few weeks in the laboratory. 

It was a weird feeling to go from a position where I was uncomfortable with research and did not feel confident in my abilities as a researcher to now supervising a group of undergraduate students and high school students that were relying on me to guide them about the research project. All of the members in Dr. Summers’ laboratory taught me how to critically think about experiments, how to decide the next steps about our project, how to present my work to others, and how to feel confident in the research I was conducting. It was this research opportunity that solidified my intent to pursue graduate school and continue my career as a scientist.

Fast forward 4-plus years later, I now have my own group of undergraduate students and laboratory technicians (the largest group in the entire laboratory) who conduct research to advance our project.

Q: What’s your favorite part of being a part of Retriever Nation?

A: I love to attend the alumni events put on by the different alumni organizations. With the work I have done with CYA, I have had the chance to host some of these events and meet so many amazing alumni through happy hour events, trivia nights, and the Alumni Awards. The best part of hosting the events is working with the fantastic Alumni Engagement and Development team—they represent some of the best staff I have ever had the opportunity to work with and when you are planning and hosting events with them, it does not even feel like work.

Q: If you’re a donor, what drives you to support UMBC?

A: Throughout my undergraduate experience, I had a wide array of positions to help financially support my family while attending school. It is a lot to manage especially as you are trying to participate in different activities like research, extracurricular activities, or just spending some time with your friends or roommates. Whether or not there is a student who is in a similar predicament as I was, I donate to help alleviate some of the financial stress of school.

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UMBC’s greatest strength is its people. When people meet Retrievers and hear about the passion they bring, the relationships they create, the ways they support each other, and the commitment they have to inclusive excellence, they truly get a sense of our community. That’s what “Meet a Retriever” is all about.

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