Wen Liu
PhD, RN, FGSA, FAAN
Associate Professor
307F Nursing Science Building
University Park
Phone: 814-865-9137
Email: wvl5460@psu.edu
Dr. Liu is an Associate Professor at the Penn State Ross and Carol Nese College of Nursing. She was an assistant professor at the University of Iowa, College of Nursing since 2015 and was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2021. Dr. Liu’s primary program of research focuses on optimizing behavioral challenges, food intake, function, nutrition, hydration, and quality of life for older adults with dementia through dissemination and promotion of person-centered care among formal and informal caregivers in long-term care and communities. Dr. Liu’s secondary program of research focuses on development and validation of behavioral measures and use of advanced behavioral methodologies, which has greatly facilitated her research, mentoring, and teaching as well as collaborations on- and off- campus in dementia/aging research. Her team has developed and/or validated observational tools in dementia/aging research, occupational health, oral health, health education, and behavioral science. Dr. Liu’s long-term research goal is to establish a focused program of patient-centered, interdisciplinary clinical research and implement evidence-based, cost-effective, scalable, person-centered mealtime care programs and optimize quality of care and outcomes among older adults with ADRD and other conditions and their professional and family caregivers in long-term care, home care and other community care settings nationwide and worldwide.
Dr. Liu has established a competitive program of research with support of successful funding. To date, as Principal Investigator, she has secured multiple competitive grants (total cost >$1.45 million) for ADRD mealtime care research from NIH/NIA, Alzheimer’s Associations, and American Nurses Foundation. Dr. Liu’s earlier work examined the role of the resident/individual-, staff/caregiver-, environmental-, and institutional-level factors that influence eating performance, mealtime behaviors, food intake, function, nutrition, and quality of life for older adults, especially those living with dementia. Her team has examined professional caregivers’ perceptions of multi-level facilitators and barriers to delivering optimal mealtime care in long-term care. Her team has also synthesized knowledge evidence and gaps in measures of dementia mealtime care and outcomes, developed tools and methodologies to evaluate the psychometric quality of behavioral measurements, and developed and validated clinically feasible and useful instruments to assess important concepts of dyadic interactions during dementia mealtime care, including the Mealtime Engagement Scale that assesses caregiver engagement during mealtime care. With support from American Nurses Foundation, Dr. Liu has developed and validated the refined Cue Utilization and Engagement in Dementia (CUED) mealtime video-coding scheme, an innovative, feasible, and reliable behavioral coding tool to measure person-centered and task-centered care, mealtime positive and challenging behaviors, and food intake process using videotaped observations. Recently her team received funding from the Alzheimer’s Association to adapt the refined CUED coding scheme into clinically practical and useful scales to assess the key concepts in the field of mealtime care interactions and outcomes.
With funding from NIH/NIA, her team has also characterized person-centered mealtime care, positive/challenging dyadic interactions, and dining environmental stimulation, as well as examined how nursing home staff person-centered and task-centered care approaches are temporally related with mealtime behaviors and food intake in residents living with dementia using innovative behavioral coding methodologies and sequential analytical approaches. Data from these studies have provided critical preliminary data that informed her recently completed intervention study with support from NIH/NIA. Through this study, she has synthesized knowledge evidence and gaps in non-pharmacological interventions for dementia mealtime care, and developed and tested a person-centered mealtime care intervention which shows feasibility, acceptability, usefulness, and efficacy in optimizing quality of care interactions, mealtime behaviors, eating function, and food intake amount in long-term care residents with dementia and their care staff. With expertise in dementia/aging care and outcomes, behavioral coding, and measurement development and validation, Dr. Liu has also contributed as a Co-Investigator, consultant, and/or advisor/sponsor in multiple extramural grants funded through NIH and external foundations (total cost >$5.18 million). Her team has built a strong foundation in dementia mealtime care and established solid collaborations and relationships with front-line professional caregivers, family caregivers, as well as national researchers in dementia care, nutrition, caregiver training, and measurement.
Dr. Liu has achieved a highly successful and proliferative track record of 57 peer-reviewed high-quality publications in top-tier journals in top-tier journals in nursing, gerontology, medicine, long-term care, and measurement (see Google Scholar; 43 data-based; 38 first-authored/senior-authored, 10 second-authored; 21 student-led/authored; h-index = 19, i10-index = 29, 1931 citations). She has also had more than 120 conference presentations at international, national, and regional levels, demonstrating the impact of the work in aging research and practice. Dr. Liu has integrated her primary and secondary research foci organically and her scholarship has contributed to new knowledge in gerontological science through addressing multiple significant and interrelated problems in advancing the field of dementia/aging care and outcomes. Her impact to gerontological and nursing science and education is acknowledged through multiple awards and recognitions, including the 2022 Midwest Nursing Research Society (MNRS) Harriet H. Werley New Investigator Award, the 2022 National Hartford Center of Gerontological Nursing Excellence Distinguished Educator in Gerontological Nursing, and the 2025 MNRS Gerontological Nursing Science Mid-Career Award. Dr. Liu was recognized as a Fellow at the Gerontological Society of America in 2023, and a Fellow at the American Academy of Nursing in 2024.
Education
- Graduate Certificate (Translational and Clinical Investigation), University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA (2021)
- PhD in Nursing, University of Maryland (2015)
- Master in Medicine (Specialized in Geriatric Nursing), Shandong University, Jinan, China (2011)
- Bachelor in Medicine (Specialized in Nursing), Shandong University, Jinan, China (2008)
Research Focus and Areas of Expertise
- Optimizing mealtime care quality and outcomes for persons with dementia and their professional and family caregivers using behavioral, person-centered interventions
- Advanced methodologies on behavioral coding and analyses of video/audio-taped dyadic interactions
- Tool/measurement development and validation using Classical Test Theory and Item Response theory
