Dr. Betty Kramer is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work, and is a Faculty Affiliate of the Institute on Aging and Adult Life, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  She received her PhD at the University of Washington in 1992.  Her dissertation research, funded by a Pre Doctoral Fellowship in Health Services Research at the Seattle VA Medical Center, centered on the topic of stress and coping of wives caring for husbands with dementia.  Dr. Kramer holds an MSSW from the Raymond A. Kent School of Social Work at the University of Louisville.

Dr. Kramer’s professional and clinical experience over the past 15 years, in a variety of settings (i.e., nursing homes, community agencies, hospitals, geriatric evaluation units and support groups), has deepened her understanding of the challenges of later life and the multiple consequences experienced by family members caring for older adults with chronic impairments and terminal illnesses, and has greatly informed her teaching and research.  Dr. Kramer was the recipient of the Excellence in Teaching Award from the University of Washington and was recently inducted into the prestigious Teaching Academy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  She has given dozens of talks, workshops, seminars, media presentations, and key note addresses on topics related to aging and elder care, has taken an active role in showcasing gerontological research via coordination of GSA symposia, has had membership in nine aging related professional organizations, and provides extensive reviews for publishers and professional journals.

A primary aim of Dr. Kramer’s research has been to understand the experience and variation found among family members caring for older adults with chronic and terminal illnesses in order to enhance services provided to this population.  Through her research, she has strengthened understanding of the predictors of both positive and negative caregiver outcomes, and has highlighted the unique experience of men caregivers who had been largely neglected in prior studies.  She has recently co-edited with Edward Thompson, a volume entitled Men as Caregivers:  Theory, Research, and Service Implications (in press).  Her studies have involved qualitative (e.g., in-depth interviews, and participant observation), and quantitative (e.g., surveys, and analysis of secondary data) methods, and have enhanced Dr. Kramer’s expertise in conducting research involving later life families.  

Dr. Kramer was recently selected as one of ten outstanding social work faculty scholars to participate in a program to improve the well being of older adults by strengthening geriatric social work education, by the John A. Hartford Foundation of New York City and The Gerontological Society of America.  Over the next two years she will seek to understand how EOL care is provided to frail elders with advanced chronic disease, in an innovative, fully “integrated” managed care program in which social workers play a key role on an interdisciplinary team.   This work will complement her PDIA project which seeks to strengthen social work education to improve end-of-life care..