Marissa Rurka Wade
Senior Project Manager
Marissa Rurka Wade is a senior project manager on CHRT’s research and evaluation team. She leads a portfolio of research projects, including the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion and Deflection (LEADD) evaluation. She also supports projects related to healthy aging, family caregiving, and health-related social needs.
Before joining CHRT, Rurka Wade assisted with an evaluation of Minnesota’s value-based reimbursement policies for nursing facilities. In particular, her role was to evaluate a measure of long-stay resident quality of life. Prior to that, Rurka Wade served as a research assistant and graduate project coordinator for the Within-Family Differences Study, a panel survey exploring the implications of family relationships and caregiving for health and well-being. Rurka Wade also interned at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), where she analyzed PCORI’s portfolios of comparative effectiveness research studies related to advanced illness and caregiving.
Rurka Wade holds a PhD in sociology and gerontology, as well as an MS in sociology, from Purdue University. She received a BA in sociology from Elon University.
Recent work
- The Caregiver Identity in Context: The Consequences of Identity Threat from Siblings. Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, 2020.
- Accuracy of Adult Children’s Perceptions of Mothers’ Caregiver Preferences. The Gerontologist, 2019.
Current Projects
- Synthesizing learnings for the community routes: Advancing access to mental health care learning summit
- Lessons learned from the Pfizer Foundation’s community health innovation grant program for infectious disease control in underserved communities
- Synthesizing learnings from Pfizer’s community health innovation awards for infectious disease prevention
Presentations
- The impact of siblings on caregiver psychological well-being. Presented November 2, 2022 to Gerontological Association of America Annual Meeting.
- Screening and referring patients for food and housing insecurity. Presented January 25, 2023 to Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.