Nearly $2.9 million Secured to Monitor Age-related Illness in American Indian Population

Demonstrating its commitment to our community, the Department of Gerontology and its chair, Mario Garrett, Ph.D., have recently secured three grants worth nearly $2.9 million to support interdisciplinary, groundbreaking research on important societal issues.

These projects focus on issues of aging for American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) populations, two groups often overlooked in research. There are over 4.3 million AI/ANs in the U.S.; there are 18 American Indian reservations in San Diego county alone, more than in any other U.S. county, and California is home to 107 federally recognized tribes.

"American Indians are the sparrows in the mine: when the system starts failing they are the ones to experience it first," says Garrett, explaining his interest in the population. "They are a good barometer of emerging epidemics, such as obesity, diabetes, and coronary vascular disease, which has a higher prevalence rate among American Indians than other large sub groups."

Center for disease monitoring

SDSU's Department of Gerontology will share in a $2.5 million grant from the Federal Indian Health Service to establish a center for monitoring disease in the American Indian population of California, with national focus on the elderly and age-related illnesses. Garrett will work with Stephanie Brodine, M.D., professor in the Graduate School of Public Health, to develop the Tribal Epidemiology Center, as well as a public health infrastructure, through the expansion of existing programs within California. This initiative is made possible through a unique collaboration among American Indian tribes and universities throughout California.

The data collected will be used to assist AI/AN communities in implementing and enhancing disease surveillance systems and identifying their highest-priority health status objectives based on epidemiologic data.

Resilience among American Indian caregivers to the elderly

In a second project, funded by a grant of $350,000 from Native American Research Centers for Health (NARCH), Garrett will work with Tom Lidot, from the School of Social Work, to examine the resilience of Southern Californian American Indian caregivers to the elderly.

In our society, the family is the primary provider of long-term care to the elderly, and evidence shows this to be a stressful experience for the entire family. What's more, research shows that minority families are more likely to provide long-term care services than non-Hispanic white families, and that the experience of caretaking responsibilities and stresses differ between AI/AN and non-Hispanic white caregivers.

Diabetes and coronary vascular disease prevalence

A third grant of $36,000 supports Garrett's longstanding ambition to develop an outcome-based research model to determine why diabetes and coronary vascular disease (CVD) are so prevalent among the American Indian population. The grant will enable Garrett and UCSD colleagues to expand on the correlates of diabetes and heart disease by analyzing a database of more than 5 million records of clinic and hospital visits made by AI/ANs. By including socio-political factors (e.g. poverty and unemployment), research results should provide a more accurate picture to identify the context of diabetes and CVD within the AI/AN populations.