Adaptation to Chronic Illness in a Puerto Rican Population

小行星9407084 该项目（与9407124，贝茨合作）支持三位文化人类学家研究波多黎各慢性不可治愈的关节炎患者如何科普他们的疼痛和残疾。 研究人员将确定一组约65名关节炎患者，并在一系列密集的采访中研究他们如何科普和管理他们的疾病。 这些信息将与盎格鲁人如何科普慢性病的研究进行比较。 方法包括密集的生活史访谈，检查患者记录，并进行标准化问卷调查，涉及疼痛管理，应对策略和慢性疾病的心理调整（关节炎影响测量量表，麦吉尔疼痛问卷，生活满意度量表，种族和疼痛问卷，以及控制点风格。 这个项目很重要，因为它扩大了适应慢性病的模式，将种族变量包括在内。 它将增加我们对人类适应无法治愈的慢性疾病的能力的理解，通过确定在受试者不同的环境中影响其整体调整水平的应对策略，资源，限制和其他因素。 从这个项目的知识将是有用的，所有的卫生保健人员寻求发展文化相关的卫生保健提供程序。 该项目还涉及残疾人和少数民族科学家的研究，因此有助于活跃研究人员群体的多样性。

9407084 Rankin-Hill This project (which is collaborative with 9407124, Bates) supports three cultural anthropologists studying how Puerto Rican sufferers from chronic, incurable arthritis cope with their pain and disability. The researchers will identify a group of about 65 sufferers from arthritis and in a series of intensive interviews will study how they cope with and manage their diseases. This information will be compared with the studies of how Anglo populations cope with chronic disease. Methods include intensive life history interviews, examination of patient records, and the administration of standardized questionnaires dealing with pain management, coping strategies, and psychological adjustment to chronic illness (the Arthritis Impact Measurement Scale, McGill Pain Questionnaire, Satisfaction With Life Scale, Ethnicity and Pain Questionnaire, and Locus of Control style. This project is important because it broadens the model of adaptation to chronic illness to include ethnic variables. It will add to our understanding of the human ability to adapt to incurable chronic disease by determining what coping strategies, resources, constraints and other factors in the subjects varied environments affect their overall level of adjustment. The knowledge from this project will be useful to all health care personnel seeking to develop culturally relevant health care delivery procedures. The project also involves the research of handicapped and minority scientists, and therefore contributes to the diversity of the active researcher population.