Schroepfer Receives Gerontology Achievement Award
July 27, 2009

MADISON— Assistant Professor Tracy Schroepfer received the Association for Gerontology in Education in Social Work's 2009 Faculty Achievement Award recognizing her outstanding contributions to the field of social work and aging.

The Faculty Achievement Award is given to a faculty member who is in the early stages of their academic career and whose scholarship, teaching and contributions to the field show significant potential for ongoing contributions to aging and social work.

Professor Schroepfer's research focuses on determining the best ways in which to meet the psychosocial and spiritual needs of terminally ill elders, as well as the reduction of cancer health disparities in medically underserved communities in Wisconsin.

Schroepfer's current projects include:

1. determination of the role that control plays in the dying process of terminally ill elders,
2. development of an instrument to assess the psychosocial and spiritual needs of terminally ill elders, and
3. assessment of the access to, and the quality of, cancer care in eight medically underserved Wisconsin communities with the goal of using the information to set priorities concerning cancer issues, and developing and implementing culturally specific interventions.

Major funding for her work comes from the John A. Hartford Foundation and the Wisconsin Partnership Program.