Caring for Native American Elders: Prairie Addition Pilot Project

Caring for Native American Elders: Prairie Addition

Patricia Holkup, PhD, RN
Principal Investigator
Montana State University
College of Nursing
Missoula Campus
pholkup@montana.edu

| Team | Dissemination |

Overview:

Purpose: Elder abuse is a problem of concern among Native American communities. This application emerges from a larger research program to design, implement, and evaluate models for family conferences for Native American elders at risk of abuse because chronic and debilitating illnesses have forced them to become dependent on younger family members. To date, we have worked exclusively with one Tribal community in Montana. Because we will be targeting more than one tribe for the larger project, we need to obtain pilot data to determine the feasibility of conducting family conference interventions with other Native American Tribes/Nations. The purpose of this application is to gather background and contextual data from one additional Tribal community in Montana to expand the foundation from which to design a proposal to secure funding via NINR’s R01 mechanism for a more extensive project.

Aims: Thematic and matrix analyses will address the specific aims of this project: a) to delineate a representational model of elder abuse, b) to explore the practices of addressing elder abuse on the two reservations, c) to elicit opinions from service providers and lay people about the feasibility of implementing a family conference intervention, and d) to describe those community strengths that may be used in the implementation and sustainability of the family conference intervention.

Methods: Employing a descriptive, exploratory design, data will be collected from multiple sources including guided interviews (individual and group), observation (direct and participant), and documents that can be found either in the public domain or that are project generated.

Continuation: This proposed pilot project represents a component of a larger program of research that began with a two-phased pilot project to develop, pilot, and assess the feasibility of an intervention, the Family Care Conference, for Native American elders on one Montana reservation, who were at risk of elder mistreatment. Subsequently we expanded the project, via the R21 mechanism, to develop a Family Care Conference initiative on that same reservation. The information learned from the initial pilot project combined with what we learn in the R21 and this pilot project, will enable us to build a larger intervention project to implement and evaluate various family conference models on multiple reservations in Montana. Ultimately we intend to develop the means to make these models available to interested Native American communities nationwide.

Team:

	Emily Matt Salois, MSW, ACSW Co-Investigator piegan@montana.com

	Toni Tripp-Reimer, PhD, RN, FAAN Co-Investigator University of Iowa College of Nursing toni-reimer@uiowa.edu

	Clarann Weinert, SC, PhD, RN, FAAN Co-Investigator Montana State University College of Nursing cweinert@montana.edu

Dissemination:

Publications

Holkup, P., Weinert, C., Tripp-Reimer, T., & Salois, E. (2005). Partnering with a tribal community to address elder mistreatment concerns [Abstract]. Communicating Nursing Research, 38, 402.
Holkup, P., Weinert, C., Tripp-Reimer, T. & Salois, E. (2005). Working together: A native family addresses elder mistreatment concerns [Abstract]. Communicating Nursing Research, 38, 411.
Salois, E., Holkup, P., Tripp-Reimer, T. & Weinert, C. (In press). Research as a spiritual covenant. Western Journal of Nursing Research.
Holkup, P.A., Tripp-Reimer, T., Salois, E.M., Weinert, C. (2006). Rural research: Lessons from the field; Cross-cultural research partnerships: Not business as usual [Abstract]. Communicating Nursing Research, 39, 149.

Presentations

Holkup, P., Salois, E., Tripp-Reimer, T., & Weinert, C. (2006, January). Research as spiritual covenant. Podium presentation to be given at the National Leadership Summit on Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health In Washington, DC.
Holkup, P., Weinert, C., Tripp-Reimer, T., & Salois, E. (2005, April). Partnering with a tribal community to address elder mistreatment concerns [poster]. 38th Annual Communicating Nursing Research Conference, Western Institute of Nursing, San Francisco, CA.
Holkup, P., Weinert, C., Tripp-Reimer, T., & Salois, E. (2005, April). Working together: A native family addresses elder mistreatment concerns [poster]. 38th Annual Communicating Nursing Research Conference, Western Institute of Nursing, San Francisco, CA.
Salois, E., Tripp-Reimer, T., & Weinert, C. (2005, November). The family care conference [podium]. First Annual American Indian & Alaska Native Long Term Care Conference, Albuquerque, NM.
Holkup, P.A., Tripp-Reimer, T., Salois, E.M., Weinert, C. (2006, October). Lessons from the field: Rural nursing research; partnering with tribal communities for research [symposium]. National State of the Science Nursing Congress, Washington, DC.

Grants

2004 “Caring for Native American Elders: Grasslands and Prairie” (Co-Investigator), NINR (RO3), with Patricia Holkup (PI), Emily Matt Salois, and Toni Tripp-Reimer (Co-Investigators), not funded.
2005-2007 “Caring for Native American Elders: Grasslands and Prairie” (Co-Investigator), NINR (RO3), with Patricia Holkup (PI), Emily Matt Salois, and Toni Tripp-Reimer (Co-Investigators). ($141,500).