Faculty

Dr. Cramer is a graduate of the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) College of Nursing (BSN 1976 and MSN 1980). She earned her PhD from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln (1998). She is currently a tenured professor at UNMC College of Nursing where she teaches Health Care Policy to graduate students and Population Health to undergraduates. Her research expertise is impact and outcome evaluation of community-based programs. She has published extensively on her work, and she is co-author of the Internal Coalition Effectiveness instrument (Cramer, Atwood, & Stoner, 2006a, b) that is used nationally and internationally by public and private organizations to measure their organizational effectiveness

In 2009, Dr. Cramer and ten community partners - led by the Vetter Foundation - raised $250,000 to launch the Midwest Geriatric Nurses Quality Improvement project whose goals were 1) ensuring that long-term care RNs could achieve national certification as gerontological nurses, and 2) promoting long-term care RN leadership excellence. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Partners Investing in Nursing (RWJF PIN) provided matching funds for the project. In 2011, the American Health Care Association (AHCA)-the nation's largest association of long term and post-acute providers with 11,000 members-adopted the project as a central component of their national initiative to improve quality nursing care and the results of which are published in Geriatric Nursing (Cramer, Culross, Conley, Nayar, Nguyen, & Ojha, 2014). In addition, the National Gerontological Nurses Association adopted the project's leadership academy as a new NGNA Special Interest Group-Long Term Care. (Cramer, Culross, Conley, Nayar, Nguyen, & Ojha in Geriatric Nursing, 2014).

Dr. Cramer's current research and publications focus on evaluating complex science consortia. Dr. Cramer currently serves as Evaluation Director for two major multi-state consortia grants: the Central States Center for Agricultural Safety and Health funded by CDC/NIOSH (R. Rautiainen, PI) , and the Great Plains Center for Clinical and Translational Research funded by the National Institute of Health (M. Rizzo, PI).

Dr. Cramer is a founding member of the Nebraska Action Coalition, part of the RWJF/AARP National Campaign for Action and she serves on its Executive Board. Dr. Cramer was inducted as a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing (2009).