Editor’s Note: The McKnight’s Long-Term Care NewsDaily Update and McKnight’s Senior Living Daily Briefing e-newsletters are profiling each of the McKnight’s 2019 Women of Distinction in July. For more coverage, visit the McKnight’s Long-Term Care News and McKnight’s Senior Living websites and read the July print edition of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News and August print edition of McKnight’s Senior Living.
Christine Ulbricht, Ph.D., is committed to researching and supporting nursing home residents.
She is an assistant professor in the Division of Epidemiology in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. In this position, she focuses in the area of mental health for older adults.
Ulbricht is studying how to better understand depression subtypes experienced by nursing home residents. To complete this research, she has been awarded more than $2 million from the National Institutes of Health to conduct three mental health studies in long-term care.
The first will examine the risk factors for suicide in skilled nursing residents. The goal is to identify residents at a high risk for suicide and inform prevention efforts. The second study will look into the care needs of working age adults with mental illnesses living in nursing homes. The third will explore how depression and antidepressant treatment effects differ by level of cognitive impairment, to generate knowledge for precision medicine for residents.
In addition to launching her research program, Ulbricht mentors the next generation of scientists. She believes there will be “no science tomorrow without training today.”
She also teaches graduate-level courses in psychiatric epidemiology and systematic reviews at the University of Massachusetts, in addition to being a member of multiple committees focusing on curriculum and student research experiences.
An avid Bruce Springsteen fan, Ulbricht also enjoys yoga and escape rooms. When it’s time to get away, she and her partner, Karl, especially enjoy spending time on the southern coast of Maine.
McKnight’s Women of Distinction is a joint program of McKnight’s Senior Living and McKnight’s Long-Term Care News.
The McKnight’s Women of Distinction program’s exclusive Platinum sponsor is PointClickCare.
