Rutgers Nursing Magazine - Summer 2021

professional research team hope to answer through the creation of a unique, comprehensive research repository and a suite of analytic methods to study the trajectories of health and illness experienced by Medicare beneficiaries during the last five years of life. Thanks toa three-year, $2.3million,NIH/NIAgrant (R33AG068931), Lin, a professor of biostatistics, and Jarrín, will incorporate data on individual factors affecting health, including chronic condi- tions like heart disease and acute illnesses such as COVID-19, as well as potential environmental, political, and socioeconomic determinants like the stresses of poverty and exposure to air pollution. In addition to examining data, researchers will use predictive modeling and machine learning to determine which patients, based on a wide variety of risk factors, are more likely to enjoy a relatively independent living experience toward the last years of life, accompanied by a low expenditure on health care. “That approach,” says Lin, “is very new and should be very effective.” How Family Affects Function Supported by a $147,195 grant from the Alzheimer’s Association, Mengting Li (PhD), assistant professor, is looking into ways in which the family environment might affect cognitive function in older adults. Analyzing data collected from a large study of Chinese older adults in the Chicago area, Li and her colleagues have sorted some 3,000 individuals into four family types: tight knit (close, with minimal conflict), ambivalent (close, with high conflict), conflicted (not close, with high conflict), and detached (not close, with low conflict). Since it was launched in mid-2020, the study has already yield- ed the surprising finding that cognitive function appears to be highest among older adults in ambivalent families, perhaps, says Li, “because a stressful relationship, buffered by close fam- ily ties, might cause older adults to think about how to solve their conflicts.” She expects that the final two years of the three- year study will yield a firm explanation, along with other impor- tant insights. Her research could ultimately lead to family-based strategies that would delay or prevent Alzheimer’s and other dementias. “As life expectancy increases,” she says, “the time spent between parents and children will also increase, making intergenerational relationships especially important.” n Olga Jarrín Montaner, PhD, RN Assistant Professor Haiqun Lin, PhD, MD Professor R U T G E R S N U R S I N G / S P R I N G / S U M M E R 2 0 2 1 1 8 / 1 9 Mengting Li, PhD Assistant Professor