Accomplishments in past 36
months
Dr. Gallant has focused her recent work on psychosocial influences on the self-care behaviors of older adults and adults with chronic illness. With the goal of health promotion, Gallant is concerned with translating evidence-based research into effective public health practice at the community level. One area of her work examines how family relationships and social-network interactions influence chronic illness self-management among older adults. Based on pilot research, supported by a grant from NIA (with CSDA associate Glenna Spitze), that explored the influence of family and friends on older adults’ management of chronic illnesses, Gallant has a manuscript under revision at Research on Aging that identifies specific ways in which social-network members, in particular family and friends, positively and negatively influence older adults’ chronic-illness self-management behavior. Gallant also co-authored (with Spitze) an article in Research on Aging that focuses on the strategies that older adults with chronic illness develop for handling ambivalence in relations with their adult children. A second area of her work examines how factors at different ecological levels (social, community, environmental) influence health behaviors and self-care behaviors. Recent work in this area includes a co-authored article in the Journal of Community Health that examines sources of support for diabetes self-care in urban and rural underserved communities and documents the relationship between these sources of support and diabetes self-care behaviors.
Externally funded research
Gallant is the Co-PI of the Core Research Project of the School of Public Health’s Prevention Research Center (and was the PI for the previous Core Project). This project involves implementing community-based walking programs in rural communities in upstate NY. Gallant is currently collaborating with Senior Services of Albany on a grant funded by the Administration on Aging as part of a national effort to implement and disseminate evidence-based health promotion programs for older adults. This project, one of 13 demonstration sites, involves the community-based implementation of a heart disease self-management program for older women. Gallant was funded (with Glenna Spitze) through Albany’s Center for the Elimination of Minority Health Disparities to complete a pilot study, which developed a critical literature review on cultural and social-network factors in minority populations that affect chronic-illness self-care.
Work in progress and
pending/planned research projects
Gallant (with CSDA associate Spitze) plans to submit an R01 research grant application to NIA in February 2007 that will build on their NIA-funded pilot research project and on their work as part of the Center for the Elimination of Minority Health Disparities. This planned project will examine the social context of chronic-illness self-management by collecting longitudinal data on social-network influences in three ethnic groups. This data collection will lay the foundation for the development of a self-management intervention for older adults with chronic illness.
Contribution to the
population research program
Gallant’s research fits squarely within CSDA’s signature theme on health and health disparities, and she collaborates with CSDA colleague Spitze.
Use of infrastructure cores and activities
Gallant relies on the administrative infrastructure, statistical consultation resources, and computing infrastructure provided by the Center.