Assessing Quality of Life for Rehabilitation Patients

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): I completed MY Ph.D. in 2000 from the Graduate Program in Preventive Medicine and Community Health at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB). His dissertation was titled, "Emotional well-being and subsequent health, functional ability and mortality in older non-Hispanic whites, blacks, and Mexican Americans." After completing his Ph.D., he served as a guest researcher at the National Institute on Aging (NIA), Laboratory of Epidemiology, Demography, and Biometry in Bethesda, Maryland. While at the NIA he was an investigator on the Women's Health and Aging Study and the Hebrew Home Study of Impairments and Exercise. He has been assistant professor in the Division of Geriatrics at UTMB since July 2001, with joint faculty responsibilities in Rehabilitation Sciences. Career Goals. My long-term career goal is to develop an independently funded research program in the area of rehabilitation outcomes. He is particularly interested in how concepts such as quality of life are related to recovery of functional performance in persons with disability and chronic disease. His immediate and specific career objectives to achieve this goal are to 1) Develop an understanding of quality of life including satisfaction and participation as described in the medical rehabilitation and disability literature; 2) Establish a working knowledge of conceptual frameworks used to guide research in rehabilitation with a focus on the WHO ICF disablement model and the IOM's Enabling-Disabling Process; 3) Acquire expertise in data management; 4) Develop skills and expertise in item response theory (Rasch analysis) and use this knowledge to examine quality of life measures in injury, disability and chronic disease; 5) Publish research articles in high impact peer reviewed journals; 6) Present research outcomes at national interdisciplinary conferences; 7) Obtain grant funding (i.e., RO1 funding) as a principal investigator to conduct research in the areas of disability, recovery and quality of life; and 8) Develop a comprehensive understanding of issues associated with scientific integrity and the responsible conduct of research involving humans. Research Plan. The Research Plan includes examination of quality of life variables (satisfaction and participation) using a national database of rehabilitation outcomes. The Specific Aims include examining the psychometric characteristics of patient satisfaction and participation and the relationship between change in functional status and these variables.