HCGNE - Scholars

	Debbie Shibley is a BSN-PhD graduate student who worked a large portion of her professional career as a staff nurse in hospitals caring for patients in a variety of settings, mostly critical care until returning back to school in 2006. In the PhD program and for her dissertation Shibley will focus on pain in older adults. Deborah is specifically interested in understanding the role conditioned pain modulation, a complex pain modulation system that helps individuals control pain, may play in pain in older adults.
	Mandy Peacock is an adult and gerontological nurse practitioner in the surgical intensive care unit at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.  She received her BSN from Truman State University in 2007 and her MSN from the University of Iowa in 2011.  She is currently pursuing her DNP through the University of Iowa.  Her DNP project focuses on the reduction of diabetic foot complications in rural India using the Culturally-informed and Chronic Care models.  In the ICU, her interest is on improving safety and quality of care for critically-ill older adults.  Specific interests include the early recognition of acute delirium, and the continuity of care and educational needs of stroke sufferers and their family members.
	Deb Burdsall has worked for a large portion of her professional career at the Lutheran Home in Arlington Heights, IL, a 490 resident faith based, not for profit community including sheltered, intermediate and skilled levels of resident care. Burdsall focuses in aging studies and epidemiology. Her academic mentors are Kennith Culp, PhD, RN, FAAN (primary) and Loreen Herwaldt, MD (secondary). Burdsall works part time as Infection Preventionist at Lutheran Life Communities in Arlington Heights Illinois, an elder care community with full continuum of care, including adult and child day services, assisted living, care within a complete memory support continuum, and sheltered, intermediate and skilled care. She is also actively involved with APIC (Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology). Deb has board certifications in gerontological nursing (ANCC) and infection control (CBIC).
	Mary Ellen Stolder has maintained a decades-long passion for gerontological nursing, beginning with her employment as a nursing assistant at a long-term care facility in Madison, WI. Stolder's dissertation focus is the relationship between age-related memory changes in later life, memory-self-efficacy beliefs and self initiated and compensatory behaviors among the oldest-old community dwellers, in order to promote the independence of elders.
	Charlene S. Aaron, MSN, RN, BC received a BSN from Illinois Wesleyan University in 1994, a MSN in Nursing Systems Administration in 2006, from Mennonite College of Nursing at Illinois State University, and is pursuing a Doctorate in Nursing in Aging from the University of Iowa. Charlene’s research agenda includes researching the physical, psychosocial, and economic cost of caring in African-American families providing dementia care to family members at home. The goals of the research are to inform nursing science about cultural considerations in dementia caregiving, to support families of vulnerable populations caring for older adults afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease.

JONAS Scholar

Ann Bossen, is a third year doctoral candidate and currently working as the Project Coordinator for The Multilevel Translation Research Application in Nursing Homes (MTRAIN) NINR RO1 study of Dr. Janet Specht. Her education is from the University of Iowa with bachelors and masters degrees in nursing science along with certificates in Informatics and Global Health. Her area of focus is in working with nonpharmacologic interventions for persons living with Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders, to promote improved quality of life for patients and their caregivers. Her research is focused on neural plasticity, cognitive reserve and how the natural environment enhances these cognitive capacities. Her interest in research was inspired by the International Dementia Scholars Collaboration (IDSC previously known as Dementia Day Camp), an international interdisciplinary group of dementia researchers. She has worked with the WHO on an international interdisciplinary online forum to discuss healthy active aging. Bossen coordinates study abroad courses to study health care in Iceland.

Pilot Grants Awards

Dr. Wallace is an assistant professor at the University of Iowa College of Nursing. Her research interest is in finding means of improving outcomes for those living with chronic illness, particularly for vulnerable patient populations. Her recent work has included an intervention to improve self-management support for those with diabetes, a state-level survey examining chronic back pain, and a clinical survey study examining the association between literacy, perceived health care quality, and diabetes outcome.

In her latest study funded by the Hartford Center, Dr Wallace seeks to understand the role social support plays in the diabetes self-management of fifty older adults with diabetes, with a particular emphasis on how it may facilitate the self-management of those with health literacy needs. Up to half of all Americans have low health literacy, defined as not understanding written and verbal information well enough to appropriately act on health information. The association between low health literacy and poorer disease-related outcomes are well-established. However, the adverse health effects of low health literacy are particularly salient for the older adults, for whom higher rates of low literacy and greater diabetes burden co-occur. Because the medical care of diabetes requires patients to interpret and act on complex health information, low health literacy appears to act as a powerful barrier to achieving optimal diabetes outcomes. The study’s specific aims are 1) To describe patients’ sources of informal diabetes support (who is involved and tasks with which they assist); and 2) To determine what types and levels of informal diabetes support are associated with better diabetes outcomes for individuals with limited health literacy.

Marianne Smith, PhD, RN is an assistant professor at the University of Iowa College of Nursing. Her research is based on clinical experiences in community mental health and long-term care settings, and is focused on translating best practices in geriatric psychiatric mental health care into daily care. Her current research is focused on recognizing depression among older adults who live in assisted living settings and strategies to reduce the risk of disability and discharge to higher levels of care. Dr. Smith is also an investigator on study that promotes use of nonpharmacological interventions and decision-making related to use of atypical antipsychotic medication use in dementia, and is facilitating a depression-related training project for the Iowa Geriatric Education Center.

Late life depression is a current and increasing public health problem, one that regularly incurs needless suffering and disability if not treated. The feasibility of a new model, Depression Treatment for Assisted Living (DT-AL) is the focus of Dr. Marianne Smith’s research. The DT-AL Model will be evaluated for use in assisted living (AL) settings where 1 in 4 elders has clinically significant depression. The model blends key features of two highly successful evidence-based models: depression care management and elderly outreach. Key approaches that are part of the model include providing collaborative depression care on-site in AL, engaging daily service providers to support depression-related self-care activities, and involving AL registered nurse (RN) a depression resource and facility liaison person.

Der-Fa Lu, PhD RN is Assistant Professor at The University of Iowa College of Nursing. She teaches courses in Health and Nursing Informatics. She recently is developing a program of research in Healing Touch and older adults. She wants to use her training in both informatics and genontolgoical nursing to advance nursing science.

She is the PI for a pilot grant awarded by the Hartford Center to test the effect of Healing Touch on nursing residences with osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis (OA), one of the main causes of chronic disability in the elderly, affects approximately 27 million Americans. This pilot study will test the effect of Healing Touch on 24 elderly persons, who live in nursing homes, have normal mental status, and who have a diagnosis of osteoarthritis (OA) of their knee(s). Subjects in the treatment group will receive Healing Touch three time per week for 6 weeks to determine the effect on their pain, joint function (mobility and flexibility) and depression as it relates to their OA.

Elisa Torres, PhD, RN is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Iowa, College of Nursing. Her program of research involves the antidepressant effects of physical activity. She is the PI for a pilot grant awarded by the Hartford Center to examine the potential effects of exercise in preventing or delaying declines in the brain associated with aging, resulting in lower depressive symptoms in community-dwelling older adults.

Late-life depression is associated with disability, functional decline, diminished quality of life, mortality from co-morbid medical conditions or suicide, demands on caregivers and increased service utilization. Dr. Torres hopes to incorporate brain imaging techniques to study differences in the brain between active and sedentary older adults. Exercise may be an effective intervention for treating late-life depression, as well as preventing or delaying mental decline and improving cognitive health, with the long-term goal of prolonging the independence of older adults.