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About Us
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The mission of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) College of Nursing Tailored Biobehavioral Interventions Research Center is to bring together a cadre of scientists to facilitate and enhance the development of the science of tailored biobehavioral interventions and inform clinical practice. Holistic care is valued because it incorporates the patient’s unique characteristics, such as biological state, affective state, cognition, ethnicity, beliefs, needs, goals, preferences, and resources. Unfortunately, we have little evidence about the efficacy of tailored biobehavioral interventions. It is important for all interdisciplinary researchers to begin developing the science of tailored care and provide evidence to justify this approach in clinical practice. The Center will conduct exploratory research to inform future tailored biobehavioral intervention studies, design instruments which measure the unique characteristics of individuals and outcomes, apply and test theories and conceptual models for tailoring interventions, and delineate standardized processes for developing and testing tailored biobehavioral interventions. The Center will discover the scientific evidence for tailored interventions and it will refine a new model that we developed to guide research, the Process Model for Developing and Testing Tailored Biobehavioral Interventions. The Tailored Biobehavioral Interventions Research Center will make a significant contribution to achieving the goals of the NINR. Investigators will conduct and disseminate highly relevant clinical research on tailored biobehavioral interventions that will have a significant impact on improving health and well-being for people with a variety of prevalent health conditions across the lifespan. Specific Aims of the Center are to: 1. Develop a community of scientists focusing on the science of tailored biobehavioral interventions.
a. Support Center investigators in the production of original research
focused on
b. Facilitate
interdisciplinary collaboration in the study of tailored biobehavioral
c. Develop opportunities for synergistic interaction among
investigators from
d. Provide educational and mentoring opportunities for investigators
to learn the 2. Advance the science of tailored biobehavioral interventions.
Center Model
Creation of the Center model was a collaborative process that involved extensive literature reviews, discussions among key faculty, and critique of the model by faculty and outside reviewers from both within and outside the discipline of nursing. The model is based on the premise that tailoring interventions requires an understanding of certain critical characteristics in the patient’s health experience. Once these critical characteristics are identified by investigators, specific scientific, reproducible processes can be used to select customized interventions and test their efficacy. Developing the science of tailored biobehavioral interventions will impact the health and well-being of people with a variety of prevalent health conditions across the life span by creating tailored interventions that lead to positive health outcomes. As we learn more about developing and testing tailored biobehavioral interventions, we will refine the Center Process Model. For example, we will clarify processes for balancing the goals and preferences of patients with those of their health care providers and develop clearer guidelines to help investigators identify the critical characteristics for individualizing an intervention. The steps in the process model are these: Understand 1) Understand the health experience
2) Identify and understand critical patient characteristics
for tailoring the Assess
3)
Adapt/develop instruments to assess the critical patient characteristics
for 4) Adapt/develop instruments to assess outcomes, Plan 5) Plan the tailored intervention. Implement 6) Implement the tailored intervention and maintain intervention fidelity. Evaluate 7) Evaluate outcomes.
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