Research and Life Come Together

Rebecca Utz, Cindy Berg, and Jonathan Butner recently wrote an essay published in The Gerontologist describing how their own experiences of familial health have influenced their research and their commitment to C-FAHR.

C-FAHR members, keep us updated of your new publications.  We would love to highlight them on this blog.  Send an update to:
C-FAHR-Info@utah.edu

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It’s A Family Affair: Reflections About Aging and Health Within a Family Context

1. Rebecca L. Utz, PhD, 
2. Cynthia A. Berg, PhD  and 
3. Jonathan Butner, PhD

One’s health and aging cannot be uncoupled from the family system in which it occurs. Not only do families provide genetic material that determines major health risks and outcomes, families also share a culture, environment, and lifestyle that further influence health and aging trajectories. As well, family members are interconnected, so that an illness or a positive lifestyle change in one person can have reverberating effects on the health and well-being of others in the family system. This essay explores how families have the potential to both promote and threaten individual health and well-being, thereby influencing how an individual might age or experience later life. Weaving together personal biographies from three different authors, this essay provides specific examples of how the family affects the health and aging of individuals and how the health and aging of individuals affect the larger family unit. These dynamic processes have the potential to positively or negatively shape individual experiences of health and aging, even among those persons who are not yet in late life. This essay blends a developmental life course perspective with a dynamic family-systems approach to show how families engage in collaborative efforts throughout the life course, in which they both affect and are affected by the diagnosis and management of chronic diseases and the adoption of health promoting behaviors. Applying this perspective to the study of health and aging calls for interdisciplinary thinking, as well as novel methodological and quantitative solutions.

Click here for a copy of the full essay:
http://gerontologist.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/04/20/geront.gnw081.abstract
The Gerontologist (2016)
doi: 10.1093/geront/gnw081

2015 Research Fund - 8 Pilot Grants and 3 Student Awards

The purpose of the Research Fund are to support research conducted by faculty affiliates and student members of the Consortium for Families & Health Research (C-FAHR) – in the context of personal career development, to promote interdisciplinary research collaboration among C-FAHR affiliated members, and to make C-FAHR members more competitive in securing external funding.

Families & Health Transformative Cluster

By Cynthia Berg, Dean, College of Social & Behavioral Sciences

The central idea of the Families and Health Research cluster is that the family system can be used as a vehicle to improve the health and health care of individuals across the full life-span (from infancy into late adulthood). An interdisciplinary group of scholars began to see that this idea was right for the University of Utah as it built on the strengths in multiple colleges (Social and Behavioral Science, Humanities, Health, Medicine) and the Huntsman Cancer Institute. In addition, it was an ideal fit with the local context in Utah, where families are large and multigenerational and valued as important resources for health and well-being.

The investigators in this group were successful in doing NIH funded research on family issues from understanding genetic and environmental risk factors for chronic disease within the Utah Population Data Base to state of the art observational methods for understanding family processes in the development of disease and in managing chronic illnesses. But there was a need for greater expertise in complex methodologies to capture the intricacies of family members, to develop interventions to use the full potential of the family, to disseminate and implement such interventions, and to more fully capture the cultural and demographic diversity of Utah families.

After the proposal was awarded (May 30th), this group quickly assembled in the summer months to prioritize hires, finalize job advertisements, and secure departmental partners. The group kicked off the fall semester with a brown bag attended by nearly 100 faculty members, postdocs, graduate and undergraduate students where the benefit of a multi-systems approach to the study of families and health was introduced.

This energy was carried forward in October, where the group held a kick-off conference with invited speaker Dr. Rena Repetti, a Clinical Health Psychologist from UCLA. She demonstrated how an intense look at the everyday life of families can yield insights as to how families facilitate health. The event was followed by a research mixer where faculty and graduate students rapidly presented their work on aging, family processes, and coping with chronic illness. The mixer event was an important catalyst for scholars to chart out common interests and brainstorm about research ideas for upcoming proposals to NIH. Further, a graduate student interest group has formed to share ideas and a BLOCK-U proposal has been approved for undergraduates in the fall of 2015.

In December our first candidates come in for interviews and we are excited for the possibilities of these faculty hires. The energy, excitement, and motivation of this group confirms that this is a cluster that will be transformative. Members of this group understand at both a professional and personal level the power of the family in maintaining positive health and adapting to chronic illness. 

Originally posted on "Academic Affairs" Blog on 12/18/2014
http://academic-affairs.utah.edu/academic-insider/families-and-health-transformative-cluster/