
As Associate Vice President of Workforce and Quality Improvement for the American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL), Dr. Schwartz develops and implements quality improvement initiatives, including quality measurement development and data collection and oversees workforce initiatives. She is a nationally recognized expert on quality in assisted living and workforce issues in long-term care.
Dr. Schwartz was part of the development team for the CoreQ, a customer satisfaction measure for long term care settings. She led the process for National Quality Forum (NQF) endorsement for the assisted living CoreQ measures, the first AL-specific measures to be endorsed by NQF. Dr. Schwartz earned her Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in the Department of Health Policy and Management. During graduate school she worked as a research assistant for the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS) and completed a Health Fellowship in the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee on Aging and Retirement. Prior to attending graduate school, Dr. Schwartz worked in home and community-based services in different roles including as direct care staff and as a case manager for an Area Agency on Aging.
She serves as current Chair of the Center for Excellence in Assisted Living (CEAL) Board of Directors, Co-Convener for the Gerontological Society of America’s (GSA) Assisted Living Interest Group, and as a mentor for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health Policy Research Scholars program. In 2019, she was awarded fellow status through the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) in the Social Research, Policy, and Practice Section. This is the highest class of membership in GSA and an acknowledgement of outstanding contributions to the field of aging. Dr. Schwartz earned her B.S. in Psychology and a minor in Business from Indiana University.