Jeong Eun “Jel” Lee is leveraging the potency of relationships to help individuals age well.
Lee’s center on family health came into being through her interactions with caregivers who have been struggling with themselves responsibilities. While perfecting caregiver studies, Lee, a different assistant professor in human development and family studies assuring specialist in Human Sciences Extension and Outreach at Iowa State University, seen that most caregiving studies take a caregiver’s, versus a care receiver’s, perspective.
“It’s natural, provided that sometimes care receivers aren’t always aware of all of the caregiving situation,” Lee said. “However, the need for examining support and caregiving issues from a dyadic perspective is growing.”
Bringing dyadic context to caregiving
Lee, whose doctoral dissertation at Pennsylvania State University devoted to the interdependent lives of middle-aged couples poor caregiving, said her researchers have helped her observe the power of aging couple’s relationships often operates as a fundamental cause human resilience. She said her understanding couple functioning and coping strategies also allows her to see relationships from multiple perspectives.
“The dyadic coping process, while this has been studied, is not practically implemented within caregiving settings,” she said. “Dyadic coping during the caregiving context ofttimes involves mutual goal setting, addressing both partners’ appraisals within the stress with empathy and perspective-taking. Desire to would be to create the caregiving process more collaborative for parties.”
As Lee reviews programs for aging Iowans along with families, she said her clinical background gives her important insights on the design, implementation, fidelity and evaluation of programs.
“In designing proper caregiving and family interventions, you will find there’s gap,” Lee said. “It’s extremely important to produce a bridge forwards and backwards worlds of research and practical programming, addressing the demands of both caregivers and care recipients.”
Another subject of research that Lee has long been thinking about is building social resilience of older adults. Some individuals are not born with the inclination toward social resilience, Lee said. However, she said their resiliency might be enhanced through proper interventions that change their behavior.
“People could have a predisposition for particular behaviors, but behavior changes will also help you progress toward your goal,” she said.
Establishing interventions
In making the decision to make Iowa State, Lee said the the possiblility to assist well-respected researchers while in the university’s interdepartmental gerontology program also to assist Iowa State University extension and outreach were ones she couldn’t resist.
Iowa State’s integration of gerontology research and efficient outreach programs help make sure Lee can translate her research findings into programs that benefit the public most importantly.
“It’s vital that you help people get linked with community resources,” Lee said. “As element of our land-grant university’s mission, ISU Extension and Outreach helps people be connected along with other people.”
Jennifer Margrett, the director of Iowa State University’s interdepartmental gerontology program, said Lee’s research and outreach will assist the university advance its mission to champion healthy aging.
“Dr. Lee brings tremendous expertise to her role, bridging human development and family studies, gerontology, and outreach,” Margrett said. “Her work extends the reach with the university’s research and outreach missions across Iowa and means to promote healthy aging for individuals, families, and communities.”
As Lee branches out into new communities, she acknowledges that doesn’t all Iowans are using the programs about to them. She said it is important for program planners to deal with people’s concerns in culturally competent ways, as traditionally, most minority adults tend not to utilize community programs.
One manner in which Lee wants to draw more Iowans in to enable them to really benefit from community-based programming is by establishing health communication interventions. In the interventions, extension and outreach may also help prepare older adults to communicate nearly doctors during medical visits.
Lee said the coming year, she hopes to begin pilot testing future care programs across counties in Iowa. Sessions covers topics like future care planning approaches to remain secure and independent while “aging in place” – defined by the Centers for disease control and Prevention as “the capacity to are in ones own home and community safely, independently, and comfortably, regardless of age, income, or ability level.”
“The programs help people much better self-advocates,” Lee said. “For some, it’s difficult to carry out without appearing contradictory, but by asking good questions, they’ll advocate for themselves inside a is respectful of physicians.”
