WORKS IN PROGRESS
- Psychology professors Nancy Hamilton and Ruth Ann Atchley are leading projects to understand how sleep affects the lives of women with fibromyalgia, characterized by widespread pain in muscles and tissues. One project examines the relationship between sleep and attention and memory.Another tests whether sleep interventions help alleviate the pain and fatigue of the condition.
- Social welfare professor Alice Lieberman heads a five-year effort, funded by a $2.5 million grant from the Department of Health and Human Services, to build a statewide training program for child-welfare workers, supervisors, and administrators. The Kansas Workforce Initiative will support staffing for private, tribal, and government organizations.
- Kimber Richter, associate professor of preventive medicine and public health, is lead investigator on a $2-million, four-year grant from the National Institutes of Health that will study the effectiveness of stop-smoking programs done by video contact between doctors’ offices and counselors. Ryan Spaulding, director of KU’s Center for TeleMedicine and TeleHealth, is developing the video interactions with physicians’ offices in rural Kansas.
- Elizabeth Ablah, assistant professor of preventive medicine and public health at the School of Medicine-Wichita, leads a two-year study to develop a grassroots program to help people in the community discuss environmental issues and set priorities to address them. It is funded by a $100,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency.
- The New YorkTimes reported recently on the effects of “elderspeak” on older patients. One study by Kristine Williams, associate professor at the School of Nursing, determined that older adults with dementia were more likely to become resistant and hostile when nursing staffs used well-meaning “baby talk” communication.Williams’ team developed training that helps nursing-home staffs be more respectful and less controlling yet still caring.
Produced by the KU Office of University Relations, March 2009. Editors: Evie Rapport, Deb Graber;
Writers: Evie Rapport, Brendan M. Lynch, Lauren Beatty, Mary Jane Dunlap, Jean Kygar Eblen, Mike Krings, Jack Martin;
Art Director: Mary Ackerly; Designer: Audra Kenton; Photographers: David McKinney, Chuck France,
Jaclyn Lippelmann, KU University Relations; KC BioMedix Inc., Shawnee, KS; Kansas Applied Remote Sensing
Program; Steve Puppe; Prudence Siebert/Fort Leavenworth Lamp; Diane Guthrie; Mark McDonald; Web: John Stringer, Justin Henning;