Rita A. Jablonksi, PhD, CRNP
Dr. Jablonski is an Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing at The Pennsylvania State University. She also holds a faculty affiliate position in The Gerontology Center at Penn State and a faculty position in the School’s John A. Hartford Center of Geriatric Nursing Excellence.
Dr. Jablonski’s research objectives include developing interventions to reduce care-resistant behaviors exhibited by persons with dementia. As a Brookdale Fellow, her goals include developing and pilot-testing a comprehensive mouth care protocol that integrates interventions for preventing and reducing care-resistant behavior, contains strategies to help caregivers recognize early and mild mouth care care-resistant behaviors, and applies best mouth care practices. If the mouth care protocol proves successful during the pilot study, Dr. Jablonski intends to submit a research application to the National Institutes of Health in order to more rigorously test the intervention with a larger and more diverse sample of nursing home residents with dementia using randomized clinical trials. She also intends to develop easy-to-use training programs based on the mouth care protocol and its related interventions that will be available via the internet to any interested long-term care facility. Ultimately, Dr. Jablonski hopes to translate these interventions to other areas of care-resistance, such as dressing and bathing.
Dr. Jablonski is a graduate of the University of Virginia (PhD), Virginia Commonwealth University (Certificate in Aging Studies), the University of Pennsylvania (Adult Nurse Practitioner Post-Masters Certificate), LaSalle University (MSN) and Holy Family University (BSN). Dr. Jablonski was a 2001-2003 pre-doctoral John A. Hartford Foundation Building Academic Geriatric Nursing Capacity Scholar and has received funding from both the National Institute of Nursing and the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research. She is currently an active member of the Center of Nursing Excellence in Long-Term Care, a national collaborative of nursing experts in long-term care formally known as the Nursing Home Collaborative. She is also a reviewer for several journals, including American Journal of Critical Care; Special Care Dentistry; Geriatric Nursing; Research in Gerontological Nursing; Biological Research for Nursing; and Research in Nursing and Health.
Dr. Jablonski’s mentor is Ann M. Kolanowski, PhD, RN, FGSA, FAAN.
Brookdale Leadership in Aging Fellow Class of 2009
Last updated 5/10