Department

Health & Wellness Design

Education

• George Mason University, Ph.D. Psychology, 2014

• George Mason University, M.S. Psychology, 2012

• George Mason University, B.S., with honors, Psychology, 2009

Background

Google Scholar profile

Grants

• NIH/NIA R43: Alzheimer's Family Connection: A Novel Online Community and Personalized Resource Connection for Rural ADRD Caregivers (Role: MPI)
• NIH/NIA R21: Development of the ADRD Systematic Hospital Inclusion Family Toolkit: A-SHIFT (Role: MPI)
• AHRQ R18: Improving medication safety for medically complex children with mHealth across caregiving networks (Role: MPI)
• AHRQ R01 Characterizing the ImPact of COVID-19 on Antibiotic PreScribing in AcutE Care and Identifying Resilient Stewardship Strategies (POISED) (Role: Co-I)
• NIH/NIA R44: Design, development, and validation of an AI-enabled legal planning and financial management training tool for ADRD Caregivers (Role: MPI)
• NIH/NIA R21: Helping the helpers: User-centered technology to aid caregiver management of medications for people with ADRD (Role: MPI)
• AHRQ R18 Engineering Safe Care Journeys for Vulnerable Older Adults (Role: MPI)

Scholarly Interest

Dr. Werner is a psychologist, systems thinker, and human-centered design evangelist committed to transforming the health journey through human-centered sociotechnical system design to improve the health and well-being of older and vulnerable populations and their care partners. Her research program applies systems engineering principles to conduct research aimed at the human-centered discovery, design, evaluation, and implementation of translation-ready technology interventions. This work has included developing innovative approaches to user-centered design in community settings; employing novel concepts of care distribution; and engaging end-user representatives such as older adults, care partners, and community resource providers as active members of the design team. Her research spans clinical and community settings to improve health for older adults and their care partners and children with medical complexity and their families, with a particular focus on people living with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias and their care partners.

Selected Publications

Articles

Barton H, Pflaster E, Loganathar S, Werner A, Tarfa A, Wilkins D, Ehlenbach ML, Katz B, Coller RJ, Valdez R, Werner NE. What makes a home? Designing home personas to represent the homes of families caring for children with medical complexity. (In press). Applied Ergonomics

Boutilier J, Loganathar P, Linden A, Scheer E, Nojoevich S, Elliott C, Zuraw M, Werner NE. CareVirtue: A mixed methods feasibility study of a web-based platform to support caregivers of people living with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. (2022). JMIR Aging.

Werner NE.,Rutkowski RA, Holden RJ, Ponnala S, Gilmore-Bykovskyi A. A Human Factors and Ergonomics Approach to Conceptualizing Care Work Among Caregivers of People Living with dementia. (In press). Applied Ergonomics.

Werner NE., Fleischman A, Warner G, Barton HJ, Kelly MM, Ehlenbach ML, Wagner T, Finesilver S, Katz BJ, Howell KD, Nacht C, Scheer N, Coller RJ. Feasibility Testing of Tubes@HOME: A Mobile Application to Support Family-Delivered Enteral Care. 2022. Hospital Pediatrics

Werner NE., Campbell NL, Boustani M, Ganci A, Holden RJ. Helping the Helpers – A research protocol for user-centered technology to aid caregiver management of medications for people with Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias. 2022. Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy.

Weiler DT, Lingg AJ, Eagan BR, Shaffer DW, Werner NE. Quantifying the Qualitative: Exploring Epistemic Network Analysis as a Method to Study Work System Interactions. 2022. Ergonomics.

Werner NE., Brown JC, *Loganathar P, Holden RJ. Quality of Mobile Apps for Care Partner of People with Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias. 2022. JMIR uHealth and mHealth

Liebzeit D, Rutkowski R, Arbaje AI, Fields B, Werner NE. A scoping review of interventions for older adults transitioning from hospital to home. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. 2021 Oct;69(10):2950-62.

Werner NE., Rutkowski RA, Krause S, Barton HJ, Wust K, Hoonakker P, King B, Shah MN, Pulia MS, Brenny-Fitzpatrick M, Smith M. Disparate perspectives: Exploring healthcare professionals' misaligned mental models of older adults? transitions of care between the emergency department and skilled nursing facility. Applied Ergonomics. 2021 Oct 1;96:103509.