RSG News: Grants

Resilience and Health in Communities and Individuals (Alex Zautra & John Hall, PIs)

Resilience Solutions Development Grant (Alex J. Zautra and John Hall, Co-PI's)

Building the Capacity to Use Older Adults as Models of Resilience. St. Luke’s Health Initiatives: Health in a New Key--Explorer Partnership Grant

Resilience in Arizona Hispanic Leaders (Felipe Gonzalez Castro, PI.)

Social Relations and Child Psychopathology: A Twin Study (Kathryn Lemery, PI)

Special Focus Area: Women and Family Health

Neonatal Health Outcomes Study (Linda Luecken, PI)

Resilience and Risk in Women Experiencing Premature Ovarian Failure (Mary Davis, Investigator)

Resilience Mechanisms in Low Income Hispanic Mothers and Their Infants: Accounting for Health Disparities (Kathryn Lemery, PI)

Resilience and Health in Communities and Individuals
(Alex Zautra & John Hall, PIs)

The Resilience Project will examine the capacity for “successful aging” within ethnically diverse communities in the greater Phoenix region, and fill important gaps in our knowledge of the prospects for health and well-being among all people. The $2.1 million grant funded by the National Institutes of Aging (NIA) will look at how resilience factors contribute to health and well-being in 800 adults from 40 different communities across the Valley of the Sun. Many people are able to preserve their health throughout mid-life, but others are not. The Resilience Project aims to identify biopsychosocial factors that sustain wellbeing and protect against disability by enhancing capacity to recover following stress. The present research focuses on the contribution of resilience factors across generations, that is, the effects of resilience factors on the health of elders. The Resilience Project will use a variety of methods to capture resilience, ranging from individual physiological responses in the laboratory, to daily experiences within one’s social world in diary assessments, to the impact of the community in which one resides. The Resilience project will begin enrolling participants in spring 2006.

Resilience Solutions Development Grant (Alex J. Zautra and John Hall, Co-PI's)
St. Luke's Health Initiatives and Arizona State University provided the initial funding for the Resilience Solutions Group to speed development of grant proposals and community action beginning 2003 and extending through 2004. We have used these funds to identify candidate sites for community study and intervention, initiate resilience dialogues with community leaders, build interdisciplinary teams to construct assessment and intervention strategies, establish a sampling framework for individual health and lifestyle assessments, and develop detailed proposal for a '"Framingham study of healthy aging for the Phoenix Metropolitan Area. That 5 -year grant is currently under review at the National Institute of Aging.

Building the Capacity to Use Older Adults as Models of Resilience.
St. Luke’s Health Initiatives: Health in a New Key--Explorer Partnership Grant
(Morris A. Okun, PI)

The goal of this project is to create the capacity to teach older adults how to model  resilience skills for their less robust age peers. This project will provide an opportunity for an initial collaborative effort among three Arizona State University entities: the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, the Resilience Solutions Group, and the Center for Nonprofit Leadership and Management.  The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute has considerable experience and expertise in teaching skills to older adults and in teaching them how to model skills for their age peers.  The Resilience Solutions Group has research- and intervention-based knowledge on how to build resilience in individuals and in communities.  The Center for Nonprofit Leadership and Management is the chief disseminator of information about the nonprofit sector in Arizona. The applicants have strong ties via research, community development, and lifelong learning to several communities in Western Maricopa County and we will partner with an agency--Interfaith Community Care--that we have worked with in the past and continue to work with in the present.  Located in Western Maricopa County, Interfaith Community Care is a leading provider of community services via volunteers that are designed to maintain older adults in their own homes.  Our work will proceed in several phases.  In phase I, the Resilience Solutions Group, with input from the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and Interfaith Community Care, will deliver an in-service workshop for older adult volunteers who provide direct services to age-peer clients.  They will teach participants how to model resilience skills volunteers for their clients.  The workshop will be evaluated using pretest-posttest data and a workshop evaluation form.  In Phase II, the results of the workshop will be disseminated via the Center For Nonprofit Leadership and Management’s and newsletter.  In Phase III, we will select two other nonprofit agencies and deliver the resilience education workshop to older volunteers who provide direct services to their age peers. In Phase IV, we will develop a plan for expanding our capacity to delivery resilience education to older adults.  Our long-term goal is to provide theory-based and empirically-validated resilience education throughout Maricopa County to older adults and to create opportunities for them to teach these critically important skills to their less fortunate age peers.

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Resilience in Arizona Hispanic Leaders (Felipe Gonzalez Castro, PI.)
Recently, several research studies have examined resilience among children, although less is known about resilience among adults, and especially among Hispanic adults. This proposed study seeks to identify social, cultural, personality, and other sources of resilience among adult Hispanic leaders, when compared with Hispanic non-leaders, using a mixed-methods qualitative and quantitative research approach. It is postulated that individuals who have developed leadership qualities and who have exercised these within various leadership roles will constitute some of the most resilient individuals. The proposed study will examine three specific aims. First it will examine specific factors believed to be related to resilience in “cases” (Hispanic community leaders) as compared with “controls” (Hispanic matched controls) to identify the most potent indicators of resilience. Hispanic leaders are postulated to exhibit more resilient characteristics in such areas as: family traditions and values, the value and appreciation of Hispanic culture, a bicultural orientation, better coping with life stressors, indicators or mental and physical health, and life satisfaction. Second this study seeks to examine the total sample of participants using a regression model analysis that will statistically identify the strongest factors associated with resilience. Third, this study will conduct an exploratory qualitative analysis of audiotape recorded interview responses and will conduct clinical ratings of these open-ended (platica) narratives. Derived categories of resilience will be coded via clinical ratings, to examine in a scientific manner, the association between these clinically rated resilience variables and other measured variables such as stress, traditional values, mental health indicators, etc. Generally, the proposed study seeks to conduct an in-depth analysis that can expand our understanding of various aspects of resilience, in a manner that will help both research investigators and clinical practitioners to understand resilience in-depth, and to develop better programs for building resilience among Hispanics and their families, and among members of other special populations.

Social Relations and Child Psychopathology: A Twin Study (Kathryn Lemery, PI)
Positive social relationships underlie resistance to poor health and disease in a variety of groups, yet we know little about how they may protect children from child psychopathology. The study will be conducted with a large sample of 8-year-old twin children with psychiatric diagnoses of depression, anxiety, oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. We will also include a control sample of twins without any disorder, and the cotwin siblings of the risk children. During a home visit, we videotape the twins interacting with their primary caregivers and siblings. Later we code these videotapes for positive and negative social interaction variables, including facial expressions of emotion, prosocial helping behaviors, initiating positive interactions, or on the other hand, level of intrusiveness and use of verbal commands. We then use the twin method to test models of genetic and environmental influence on the association between social variables and disorders. With this statistical technique, we can determine whether the social environment has an impact on child psychopathology, while controlling for any genetic influences. Understanding the association between social relationships and mental health in children will help us design optimal prevention and intervention programs and help children development in healthy ways.

Funded by the Institute for Mental Health Research - www.imhr.org

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Special Focus Area: Women and Family Health

Resilience and Risk in Women Experiencing Premature Ovarian Failure
(Mary Davis, Investigator)
This is a collaborative project with Lawrence Nelson, MD, of the National Institutes of Health, examining factors associated with risk and resilience in adaptation among women experiencing premature ovarian failure (POF). This medical condition represents a significant challenge for many women who, during their reproductive years, unexpectedly confront the very real possibility that they may not be able to become pregnant. The study is longitudinal, and will attempt to capture the evolving experience of women with POF, with an eye toward identifying factors that promote their continued well-being over the long term.

Resilience Mechanisms in Low Income Hispanic Mothers and Their Infants:
Accounting for Health Disparities (Kathryn Lemery, PI)
We obtained funds from the ASU Institute for Social Science Research to follow up the mothers who participated in the Neonatal Health Outcomes Study (below). We are conducting interviews at infant ages 4 and 8 months and including infant physical and social-emotional health outcomes. The primary goal of this study is to identify cultural, familial, and parental mechanisms that protect infants from the ill effects of being born into poverty. At the cultural level, we hypothesize that infant health will be stronger in low acculturated Mexican American families, where maternal marianismo, devotion to families, and familism are higher. At the familial level, we hypothesize that infant health will be predicted by family support and rituals/routines. Lastly, at the parental level, we hypothesize that infant health will be associated with high maternal resilience.

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