Well-being predictors of body composition and associated behavioral risk factors in midlife/older women participating in a meditative movement intervention: an exploratory analysis.

Introduction: Greater than 40% of women are obese, a key risk factor for cardiometabolic, neurocognitive disease, mood disorders, and certain cancers. Obesity and unfavorable body composition can compromise physical and psychological health and well-being. Preliminary evidence demonstrates Meditative Movement (i.

Pilot study of tai chi and qigong on body composition, sleep, and emotional eating in midlife/older women.

Weight gain and related adverse changes in body composition are prevalent among midlife and older women and contribute to chronic disease (e.g., type 2 diabetes, hypertension, depression).

How organizational culture influences holistic review: a qualitative multiple case study.

Studies primarily involving single health professions programs suggest that holistic review in admissions can increase underrepresented minority (URM) representation among admitted students. However, data showing little improvement in the overall proportion of URMs in many health professions, despite widespread use of holistic review, suggest that relatively few programs using holistic review admit substantial proportions of underrepresented minorities. Therefore, more research is needed to understand factors that facilitate holistic review practices that successfully promote diverse student enrollment.

Engagement With the Plan of Care Among Older Adults With Multiple Cardiac Diagnoses.

Aging adults depend on complex treatment plans to manage chronic conditions, yet little is known about their ability to perform the sophisticated behaviors required of technologically engaged patients. This qualitative descriptive study describes engagement with the plan of care. Forty chronically ill adults participated in this study, which involved an observation of the clinical encounter and an interview.

Qualitative Research in Phoenix, AZ, Exploring Support for Public-Private Partnerships to Expand the Reach of the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program.

Background: Fruit and vegetable (F/V) consumption among school-aged children falls short of current recommendations. The development of public-private partnerships (PPPs) has been suggested as an effective approach to address a number of public health concerns, including inadequate F/V consumption. The US Department of Agriculture's Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program (FFVP) provides F/V as snacks at least twice per week in low-income elementary schools.

The "Reckoning Point" as a Marker for Formal Palliative and End-of-Life Care in Mexican American Families.

Palliative and end-of-life care (PEOLC) in Mexican American (MA) caregiving families remains unexplored. Its onset was uncovered in our mixed methods, multisite, interdisciplinary, qualitative descriptive study of 116 caregivers, most of whom had provided long-term informal home care for chronically ill, disabled older family members. This subanalysis used Life Course Perspective to examine the "point of reckoning" in these families, where an older person is taken in for care, or care escalates until one recognizes oneself as the primary caregiver.

Collective Care: Multiple Caregivers and Multiple Care Recipients in Mexican American Families.

Purpose: Specific stressors associated with caregiving in Mexican American (MA) families are not well documented, yet caregiving issues are paramount because informal care for parents is central to their culture. Although MA families who band together to provide care for one member are not unique, the literature does not describe the phenomenon of collective caregiving, which may be widespread but unrecognized. This article describes these understudied families who are poorly served by contemporary health systems because their characteristics are unknown.

Qualitative Descriptive Methods in Health Science Research.

Objective: The purpose of this methodology paper is to describe an approach to qualitative design known as qualitative descriptive that is well suited to junior health sciences researchers because it can be used with a variety of theoretical approaches, sampling techniques, and data collection strategies.

Background: It is often difficult for junior qualitative researchers to pull together the tools and resources they need to embark on a high-quality qualitative research study and to manage the volumes of data they collect during qualitative studies. This paper seeks to pull together much needed resources and provide an overview of methods.

Worry Among Mexican American Caregivers of Community-Dwelling Elders.

This mixed methods, multi-site, National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR)-funded, interdisciplinary, descriptive study aimed to identify expressions of worry in qualitative data obtained from caregiving Mexican American (MA) families assisting older adults. The purpose of this portion of the inquiry was to determine how worry is expressed, what happens to caregivers when they worry, and what adaptive strategies they used. We examined semi-structured interviews completed during six in-home visits with 116 caregivers.

GCC women: causes and processes of midlife weight gain.

Perimenopausal obesity is a particular problem in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. This study examined the culturally specific views of perimenopausal GCC women, and the causes and processes of midlife weight gain using a qualitative descriptive design with semistructured interviewing and content analysis. Constructs derived from the health belief model and Kleiman's explanatory model were used to identify and sort themes into conceptual categories.

Psychosocial, cultural, and spiritual health disparities in end-of-life and palliative care: where we are and where we need to go.

Although health disparities are well documented, the extent to which they affect end-of-life care is unknown. Limited research funding leads to sparse and often contradictory palliative care literature, with few studies on causal mechanisms. This article explores the psychosocial, cultural, and spiritual health disparities existing in palliative and end-of-life care with the goal of identifying future research needs.

Activities of daily living in Mexican American caregivers: the key to continuing informal care.

La familia drives elder care in Mexican-American (MA) families, but nursing home placement can result from day-to-day caregiving demands that increase caregiver difficulty with activities of daily living (ADLs). Using life course perspective, this article describes the initial data wave of 31 MA caregivers from a descriptive, longitudinal, mixed-methods study of 110 MA caregivers and care recipients over 15 months in their caregiving trajectories. Fifteen of 31 caregivers consistently indicated "no help needed" on the Katz ADL, whereas all but one reported "help needed" during semistructured interviews with cultural brokers.

Use of Theoretical Frameworks as a Pragmatic Guide for Mixed Methods Studies: A Methodological Necessity?

There is a growing acceptance of the utility of mixed methods in health sciences but there is no widely accepted set of ideas in regard to use of a conceptual or theoretical framework to guide inquiry. Few mixed methods health science articles report the use of such a framework. Lack of available conceptual maps provided by theoretical frameworks, necessary intricacy of design, and the qualitative "black box" tradition all contribute to a dearth of methodological guidance in such studies.

Mexican-American Males Providing Personal Care for their Mothers.

We know little about Mexican-American (MA) family adaptation to critical events in the informal caregiving experience but, in these days of economic and social turmoil, sons must sometimes step up to provide personal care for their aging mothers. This article compares two empirically real cases of MA males who provided such care, in lieu of a female relative. The cases are selected from a federally-funded, descriptive, longitudinal, mixed methods study of 110 MA caregivers and their care recipients.

Food expectations-long term care Spanish questionnaire.

Although little is known about nutrition care for Hispanic older adults in nursing homes, soon at least 4.5 million will reside there because of chronic disease. The purpose of this pilot study was to test the internal consistency reliability of a food and food service satisfaction instrument, the Food Expectations-Long Term Care Spanish (FoodEx-LTCSp) questionnaire with nursing home residents and to examine relationships between satisfaction and food intake, serum prealbumin, and functional status.

Empirically based treatments for family caregiver distress: what works and where do we go from here?

Family caregivers of older adults with significant cognitive and/or physical impairment are at increased risk for both psychiatric and physical morbidity. This article examines the research literature dedicated to the development of effective interventions to reduce distress and enhance well-being for these caregivers. Using a recent empirically based treatment (EBT) review of the literature as a backdrop, 3 overarching types of interventions were described as effective: psychoeducational skill building, psychotherapy (cognitive-behavioral in focus), and multicomponent (using a combination of at least 2 approaches such as education, family meetings, and skill building).

Utility of the life course perspective in research with Mexican American caregivers of older adults.

Research on caregiving of elders in Mexican American families is urgently needed. We know little about family caregivers, family transitions in relation to the caregiving role, reciprocal impact of caregivers and care recipients on one another, adaptive strategies, positive benefits of caregiving (caregiver gain), specific caregiving burdens, or supportive interventions for family caregiving. Theory derivation using the concepts and structure of life course perspective provides a way to fill the knowledge gaps concerning Mexican American caregiving families, taking into account their ethnic status as an important Hispanic subgroup and the unique cultural and contextual factors that mark their caregiving experiences.

Lessons Learned in Clinical Research: Using the MMSE With Older Mexican American Nursing Home Residents.

This authors examined the utility of the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) in a pilot study to measure cognitive function in older Mexican American nursing home residents. Many of the lessons learned are transferable to the community: Cognitive screening instruments must be carefully examined for validity and utility, they may need to be administered in Spanish, certain items may need alteration in the questions or expected responses, phrases to be repeated must be culturally appropriate, cutoff scores may need adjustment, "serial sevens" must be used, and education and socioeconomic status must be considered in interpretation of results. Consequently, the MMSE may not be an appropriate measure to use to assess cognitive functioning in older Hispanic populations whose educational levels or literacy is low or unknown.

"Attached at the umbilicus": barriers to educational success for Hispanic/Latino and American Indian nursing students.

Hispanic/Latino and American Indian students receiving services from a 3-year Nursing Workforce Diversity Grant called ALCANCE responded every semester to a semistructured interview protocol about their program experiences. Eighteen Anglo student volunteers also participated in one such interview. Comparison of the transcribed interview sets using methods outlined by (Miles, M.

The importance of educational and social backgrounds of diverse students to nursing program success.

This article compares the educational and social backgrounds of Anglo students with those of Hispanic/Latino and American Indian students receiving stipends and other services from a Nursing Workforce Diversity Grant to determine the possible effects of such backgrounds on success in a baccalaureate nursing program. Stipend recipients provided baseline background data by interview on admission, and the results were compared with corresponding data from a volunteer sample of Anglo students to enhance understanding of the educational and social circumstances of the stipend recipients and to identify a need for individualized, tailored grant approaches. The Hispanic/Latino and American Indian students demonstrated less adequate educational backgrounds and lower social class as gauged by parental occupation, than did the Anglo students.

Quality Improvement in Nursing Homes: Identifying Depressed Residents is Critical to Improving Quality of Life.

The prevalence of depression in nursing home residents is three to five times higher than in older adults from the community.1 Depression is thought to be related to the gloomy institutionalized environment and an assortment of losses, including those associated with function, independence, social roles, friends and relatives, and past leisure activities.2 Despite the public's increased awareness of depression, it remains underrecognized and undertreated by professionals who care for older residents in nursing homes.