Co-Director
Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing
College of Nursing, School of Education, New York University  

Elizabeth A. Capezuti, PhD, RN is an Associate Professor in the College of Nursing of New York University’s School of Dentistry. She also serves as Co-Director for The John A. Hartford Foundation Institute for Geriatric Nursing at NYU. Over the last decade Dr. Capezuti has been an integral part of a team of researchers demonstrating the effectiveness of restraint reduction by advanced practice nurses in nursing homes and hospitals. Her current program of research, funded by several foundation and federal grants, focuses on the development and testing of individualized interventions aimed at improving elder care, including reduction of falls and injuries from bed rails among frail older adults. Findings from her research have been used to draft both state legislation and federal regulations related to nursing home care. She serves on several national boards and is a consultant to the Hospital Bed Safety Workgroup of the United States Food and Drug Administration and the Center’s for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Dr. Capezuti has published extensively in the areas of fall prevention, restraint and side rail elimination, elder mistreatment and legal liability issues. In recognition of her work, Dr. Capezuti was designated the 1997 Virginia Stone Scholar by the American Nurses Foundation, inducted as a 1999 Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, chosen as the 2001 recipient of the Otsuka/American Geriatrics Society Outstanding Scientific Achievement for Clinical Investigation Award, and selected as a 2003 Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.

Dr. Capezuti received her doctoral degree in nursing from the University of Pennsylvania in 1995 and was a Hartford Institute Gerontological Research Fellow at New York University in 1998. She is a nationally certified Geriatric Nurse Practitioner. She has also been on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing from 1984 through 2000 where she received the 1995 Provost's Award for Distinguished Teaching. From 2000 to 2003 she held the Independence Foundation - Wesley Woods Chair in Gerontologic Nursing at Emory University.