Janet Hahn

Janet Hahn, Ph.D. is a Credentialed Professional Gerontologist and a Fellow of the Academy for Gerontology in Higher Education. She has devoted much of her career to the quality of health and long-term care with a focus on late life and individuals with neurocognitive impairment.

Dr. Hahn is coordinator of the Healthcare Services and Sciences Program and the gerontology and long-term care courses at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, where she has worked since 2010. As coordinator and faculty, she teaches and manages many undergraduate and graduate courses.

While at WMU she has directed a three-year $341,843 study focused on behavioral interventions in skilled nursing facilities in Michigan. More recently, she directed a three-year $378,230 training development project for skilled nursing facilities in Michigan called Online Ethics Training Highlighting Improvement in Care and Compliance in Skilled Nursing Facilities (O-ETHICCS). Both projects were funded by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Nursing Facility Enrichment Program.

As Senior Outcomes Research Manager at Spectrum Health, Dr. Hahn was the lead evaluator focusing on community health programs for the underserved in Grand Rapids, Michigan from 2006-2010. Under her leadership, the evaluation team prepared evaluation plans, assisted with data collection, entered data, analyzed data and reported the results.  She also helped the Healthier Communities department seek grant funding and published articles.

Before returning to Michigan, Dr. Hahn (formerly Severance) was an assistant professor in the Physician Assistant Program at Midwestern University in Downers Grove, IL from 2002-2006 where she lectured on geriatrics, research, writing and social psychological aspects of medicine.  While there, she conducted a statewide survey of culture change in Illinois nursing homes and served as the coordinator of the Midwestern Geriatric Education Center.

Dr. Hahn worked at the Joint Commission in Oakbrook Terrace, IL from 1996 to 2002.  She first focused on accreditation education and then developed survey process guidelines and standards for many types of health care organizations while in the Joint Commission Research Division. In addition, she was a corporate performance improvement facilitator for the Joint Commission. 

Dr. Hahn has taught numerous undergraduate gerontology and sociology courses, conducted research and published articles on health services research. Her work has been published (some as Janet Severance) in Journal of Community Health Nursing, Evaluation and the Health Professions, Seniors Housing and Care Journal, Gerontology and Geriatrics Education, Southwest Journal on Aging, Caring Magazine, The American Journal of Alzheimer's Care Facilities and Related Disorders Research, and Sociological Quarterly.

She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Sociology from Kalamazoo College in 1982 and her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Minnesota in 1992. She also earned three-years of doctoral training support as a National Institute on Aging Pre-Doctoral Trainee.