October 28, 2025
The Foundation for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care (PALTC) Medicine’s research grants provide an opportunity to turn promising projects and innovations into practical solutions, tools, and resources. For 2025, the Foundation awarded a $22,507 grant to Rachel McPherson, PhD, MA, for a study entitled, Pilot Testing the Fostering Positive Care Interactions in Assisted Living (FCPI-AL).
Dr. McPherson is an assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Nursing. She has expertise in measuring and examining quality of care interactions among residents with dementia, including modifying the existing Quality of Interactions Scale to enhance its ability to measure care interactions across diverse care tasks.
The purpose of the project is to test an approach that will help assisted living staff interact more positively with residents living with dementia. As Dr. McPherson explains, ”For residents in assisted living communities, especially those with dementia, the way staff communicate and interact with them can significantly impact their quality of life. Unfortunately, prior research shows that residents with dementia often experience very few meaningful interactions with staff, and many of those interactions are either neutral or negative. Positive interactions, like smiling, offering choices, or giving encouragement, help residents feel more engaged, reduce distress, and even save staff time during care.”
The FCPI-AL study includes four components: education, environmental and policy assessments, personalized care approaches for each resident, and ongoing staff mentoring and support. The Foundation grant will (1) establish the acceptability and feasibility of the FPCI-AL intervention based on delivery, receipt, and enactment of study activities and (2) evaluate the preliminary efficacy of the FPCI-AL on the quality of care interactions received by residents, resident behavioral symptoms, resident resistiveness to care, and resident engagement with staff during care interactions. This is a 12-month pilot research study that will provide the basis for future implementation studies.
Dr. McPherson emphasizes the importance of the grant to her work. “Most previous interventions have focused on delivering information rather than using behavior change approaches to address the deeply ingrained daily behaviors of staff. As a result, there remains a significant gap in improving real-world care quality for people living with dementia,” she says. “This grant is critical, as it enables us to move beyond those limitations by implementing a multicomponent, theoretically based approach aimed at changing staff behavior in assisted living communities.”
She adds, “By focusing on everyday interactions and communication, the FPCI-AL intervention could offer a practical, long-lasting way to improve resident well-being and other outcomes. If successful, it would provide a model that other care communities could adopt to support more compassionate, person-centered dementia care.”
Dr. McPherson recommends applying for a grant if you have a relevant project. “These grants not only support the collection of valuable pilot data but also enable the rapid translation of innovative ideas into effective, real-world applications,” she notes. “The Foundation is committed to supporting education, training, and the development of evidence-based resources in post-acute and long-term care settings.”
The deadline for submitting research grant letters of inquiry for 2026 is April 13. For more information, visit the Foundation website.
The Foundation’s Grant Program is funded directly from annual donations. Consider donating now.