Caring for Native American Elders: Grasslands and Prairie

 

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 is part of a larger, active program of research to develop, implement, and evaluate models for family conferences for Native American elders at risk of mistreatment.  An important goal of the larger project is to develop a model that may be adapted by other tribal communities across the US.  To date, we have worked extensively with only one Tribal community in Montana.  Before extending this intervention to other tribes unfamiliar to us, we need to conduct community entry and obtain preliminary data identifying aspects of the Grasslands social structure, including gatekeepers, formal and informal structures and networks, and whether elder abuse is perceived by community members as a problem.  The purpose of this project is to conduct the preliminary work to be able to extend the Caring for Native American Elders project full-scale to the Grasslands Reservation.

Aims:  The specific aims are to gather background and contextual information to identify key community leaders, structures, networks, and strengths salient for planning and implementing the Family Care Conference (FCC) model.  This information will assist in describing the perceptions of elder abuse with regard to magnitude, forms, and current tribal management strategies.  In addition, our goal is to implement and evaluate up to three FCC interventions to identify and address logistical and feasibility issues necessary for implementing the intervention for Grasslands elders.  Such an evaluation will allow us to determine the feasibility of establishing an intertribal FCC facilitator support group.

Methods:  Content and process 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.  Qualitative content analysis and formative and summative evaluations will be performed.  Ultimately, a full-scale, multi-site test of the FCC intervention will be conducted on reservations through the R01 mechanism.

 

Continuation:  This proposed pilot project represents the fourth phase of a larger program of research to develop and implement interventions for Native American elders who are at risk of mistreatment.  The information learned from the first three phases of the project, combined with what we learn in this fourth phase, will provide a solid foundation for an R01 to fully implement and evaluate the FCC intervention on multiple reservations.  Ultimately, we intend to develop the means to make these models available to interested Native American communities nationwide.

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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

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Web Page Last Updated
September 11, 2006