Gretchen Alkema, PhD, LCSW

Gretchen Alkema, PhD, LCSW serves on the evaluation team for the Fall Prevention Center of Excellence.  She received her doctorate from the Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California and is a John A. Hartford Doctoral Fellow in Geriatric Social Work.  She also holds a Master’s Degree in social work and Specialist in Aging Certificate from the University of Michigan.  As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, she has professional experience in community-based service delivery located in both government agencies and the non-profit sector.  Dr. Alkema has expertise in translational research, the process and outcomes of integrating and adapting research findings into community-based programs that serve older adults.  Her dissertation analyzed client- and organizational-level outcomes from an implementation of an evidence-based medication management intervention in a Medicaid waiver care management program that served functionally-impaired, dually eligible older adults in the community (Alkema & Frey, 2006).  Her research to date has focused on improving interagency collaboration (Alkema, Shannon, Wilber, 2003) and evaluating innovative models of chronic care (Alkema, 2003; Alkema, Yip, & Wilber, 2006; Alkema, Wilber, Shannon, & Allen, 2007) to reduce service delivery fragmentation and enhance the lives of functionally impaired older adults.