It is well documented that older women are often in conflict - with adult children, frail parents, nursing home roommates, and neighbors. Research shows that older African American women tend to suppress their anger in conflict, and respond to conflict situations in submissive ways. Since older African American women are known to be highly vulnerable to illnesses associated with suppressed anger, the need for training members of this group in health-promoting strategies for conflict resolution is urgent. Yet training products do not exist. What we propose addresses this important need. Phase I of this project is a feasibility study for the purpose of videotaping one culturally-appropriate conflict scenario for use in a training videotape package on constructive conflict resolution for older African American women, and evaluating its effectiveness. In Phase II of this SBIR project, two additional conflict scenarios will be videotaped and produced, the accompanying trainers manual will be completed, a repeated measures evaluation study of the product will be conducted, and the training videotape package will be distributed. Senior housing, senior center, adult day health center, social adult day care center, community health center, managed care, and other organizations can be expected to purchase the videotape for health-promotion programming.
Package will contain video of 3 culturally-appropriate conflicts enacted by older African American women, and trainers manual for audience discussion & role play. Product brochures will be sent to community health ctrs., 670 AoAs, 14,500 U.S. senior ctrs, the 50 managed care orgs. with high elderly enrollment, & 15,000 nursing homes where about 13% of all African Am. women reside.it will be disseminated through Nat'l Assoc. of Geriatric Educ.Ctrs. It will be marketed & disseminated in collaboration with Educational Development Ctr.
