Health Care in Education
Focusing on Healthier Children
Members of the research team gather to discuss projects they are working on. From left: Clinical psychology students Amy Sato and Lisa Clifford, educational psychology professor Anthony Hains, psychology professor Hobart Davies and counseling psychology student Katie Fleischman.
Diabetes is tough on grown-ups. Children with diabetes can have an even tougher time dealing with a variety of issues surrounding their care and their health condition. And as children move into adolescence, a new range of issues often surfaces that affect how well they follow their prescribed medical care.
Anthony Hains, associate professor of educational psychology, together with Hobart Davies, associate professor of psychology and director of the UWM Child Stress and Coping Lab, have worked with the Diabetes Clinic at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin since 1995 on a number of different studies focusing on how youth with diabetes stick to complex medical regimens. They lead a research team, made up of graduate students from both counseling psychology in the School of Education and psychology in the College of Letters and Science, to work on research related to childhood diabetes as well as other issues of child health and pediatric psychology.
“When kids with chronic health conditions become teenagers, they are notorious for being poorly adherent,” Hains said. “They don’t adhere consistently or regularly to the prescribed medical care for their condition. It drives the medical teams crazy.” With diabetes, medical regimens can involve multiple tests such as checking blood sugar levels and taking insulin.
In the past, Hains said they’ve studied youth who have difficulty with emotional problems relating to their diabetes. “We work with them to try and improve their regimen adherence and to provide some intervention and teach them how to cope better with their diabetes.”
Hains said they’ve found through their research that youth often worry that peers will react negatively to their medical issues and care routines so they don’t follow their prescribed medical care when they are around their friends in social settings. But Hains said the research tends to show the opposite is true - friends can be really supportive.
The team has looked at what kids think about in situations that might interfere with performing their medical regimens. “Generally, we find that kids who are worried about peer reactions tend to anticipate greater difficulty performing their medical care around friends. It has nothing to do with peer support because they do see their friends as supporting in many cases, but still they are worried about the peers’ reactions,” Hains said.
Heidi Fowell, a doctoral student in the counseling psychology program, has been working with the research team for a year. “I was interested in the health psychology aspects of the research team. I think that there is a great need for psychology, including research, interventions and support, within medically ill populations.”
Fowell has been involved with the Diabetes Clinic in doing a qualitative study of freshmen students with Type 1 diabetes who recently transitioned into high school. To learn about their transition, Fowell went to the teens’ homes and interviewed them about their friends, types of support they received, how the transition was to high school, and what it was like for them to have a chronic illness.
“In the study,” Fowell said, “I noticed a large range of responses from the teens in terms of dealing with their diabetes. It is interesting how different kids integrate chronic illness into their self-identity.”
Fowell, who plans to work in a hospital setting doing both research and clinical work following graduation, said she has enjoyed working with a broad range of professionals (medical doctors, nurses, and clinical psychologists/students) and hearing the stories of the kids. “They are pretty amazing.”
###
