Editor’s Note: McKnight’s Senior Living, McKnight’s Long-Term Care News and McKnight’s Home Care and are profiling the 2025 McKnight’s Pinnacle Awards honorees daily in March and April. Find more McKnight’s Pinnacle Awards content at this page.

Rosa Baier, MPH, has commanded a successful 22-year career as a public health practitioner and scholar that has been dedicated to enhancing long-term care quality.

Since 2015, she has led the Center for Long-Term Care Quality & Innovation at Brown University’s School of Public Health, which was established with a $1 million contribution from the American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living. 

Baier and her team have leveraged that initial investment to obtain almost $20 million in grants and contracts annually to facilitate successful research partnerships that address real-world challenges. She has led projects with national impact, including a survey of facility-level approaches to encourage staff member COVID-19 vaccination that were incorporated into White House COVID-19 Task Force strategies to increase vaccine uptake; and a feasibility study of an infection control peer coaching intervention that now is being implemented nationally.

Baier started her career as a researcher at a Rhode Island nonprofit quality improvement organization. While there, she was fundamental to the development of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ National Nursing Home Quality Initiative that evaluated the impact of numerous quality improvement programs around pressure ulcers and pain in long-term care. She also created a goal-setting website used by more than 75% of the nation’s nursing homes and later adopted by the multi- stakeholder Advancing Excellence in America’s Nursing Homes campaign. 

Her current research also supports many National Institute on Aging-funded initiatives and clinical research and trials in areas such as dementia care and rehabilitation. 

The McKnight’s Pinnacle Awards program is jointly administered by McKnight’s Senior Living, McKnight’s Long-Term Care News and McKnight’s Home Care. Honorees were recognized March 20 at an awards reception and ceremony in Chicago. Medline and Parker Health Group were additional event sponsors.

Know of a mover and shaker who is the epitome of a Pinnacle Awards winner? Nominations for the 2026 awards will open in September. Keep up to date on news related to the program, and learn more about the nomination process, at the McKnight’s Pinnacle Awards website.