Editor’s Note: McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, McKnight’s Home Care and McKnight’s Senior Living are profiling the McKnight’s 2024 Pinnacle Awards honorees daily in April and May. For additional McKnight’s Pinnacle Awards content, visit this page.

Orah Burack diligently works out of the spotlight, keeping her head down and her mind focused on improving care and conditions throughout long-term care. Her work as a senior research associate at The New Jewish Home’s Research Institute on Aging has been instrumental in providing detailed, validated and innovative ways to improve nursing homes for both residents and staff. 

Her groundbreaking research established a training program of best practices for patient-driven comfort care and developing CNA support systems. 

Burack’s work helps inform the concept that long-term care facilities should resemble homes and not hospitals. This requires a large cultural change, and she was a co-investigator of a large-scale initiative to examine the impact of this initiative on residents, their families and staff members. The implementation of her strategic recommendations led to real and significant improvements at the New Jewish Home’s Westchester campus, including deeper relationships between residents and staff. 

Much of Burack’s research looks at combating misperceptions about nursing homes and highlighting the many positive benefits, such as helping residents lead fulfilling lives with the medical care they require. 

Her mother was an occupational therapist at the Baycrest Center in Toronto, the first place she started to learn about the potential for enriching environments in long-term care. 

Personally seeing how residents thrived led to Burack’s passion for new interventions and the development of innovative and modern methods to improve the quality of life and the quality of care for aging older adults.

  • Burack holds a master’s degree in developmental psychology from Brandeis University. 
  • He has published extensively on varied topics such as the small house model and the effect of list-making on recall.
  • He also has written about the perceived barriers to communication between hospital and nursing home staff members at time of patient transfer.

The McKnight’s Pinnacle Awards program is jointly administered by McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, McKnight’s Senior Living and McKnight’s Home Care. Honorees were recognized March 21 at a dinner and awards ceremony in Chicago. Omnicare was the Silver sponsor for the 2024 Pinnacle Awards program. Parker Health Group and Sentrics were event sponsors.