BIOBEHAVIORAL NURSING RESEARCH TRAINING PROGRAM

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Behavioral, social and biological processes interact in maintaining health, in causing all ten of the leading sources of death, and in sustaining the major chronic illnesses that account for most of health care spending in the United States. Nursing science is one of the disciplines that integrates behavioral, social and biological processes in understanding and intervening in various states of health and illness. Nursing science demands an interdisciplinary biobehavioral perspective in order to develop interventions to prevent onset or progression of impaired functioning, disability and pathology along the dual continua of health and illness. Yet the number of nurse scientists prepared to integrate biobehavioral theory and methodology is relatively small. In the past decade a serious shortage has been identified of nurse scientists prepared to conduct innovative research at the interface of biological and behavioral science. These are scientists who can translate fundamental cellular processes to the integrative functioning of whole living beings in terms of life processes and therapies. Biobehavioral trained nurse scientists are prepared with depth in an area of inquiry, yet with sufficient breadth to understand the interactions among the traditional disciplines, and trained to use innovative research technologies and analytic strategies. The goal of this training program is to train eight (8) predoctoral and three (3) postdoctoral scholars each year in order to increase the cadre of nurse scientists skilled in biobehavioral theory and methodology. The University of Washington is unique in having a cadre of nurse scientists who work exemplifies research in biobehavioral theory and methodology and in preventive interventions. The specific aims of this training program are for trainees to attain theoretical and methodological capability to (1) expand understanding of the biobehavioral interface between individual vulnerability and environmental risk as foundational for generating new interventions; (2) integrate biological and behavioral instrumentation and state of the art biomethodologies for studying transactions between individual vulnerability and environmental risk for disease, disability, or progression of these adverse health responses; and (3) test nursing therapeutics aimed at managing biobehavioral vulnerability and risk in preventing disease, impairment and functional disability, or progression of disease, impairment and disability.