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Judith Hertz
News Release
Contact: Mark McGowan, NIU Office of Public Affairs
(815) 753-9472
November 2, 2004
NIU School of Nursing professor wins
national award for gerontological nursing research
DeKalb — An assistant professor in the Northern Illinois University School of Nursing is the winner of the 2004 Judith V. Braun Award, given by the National Gerontological Nursing Association in recognition of advancing the practice of gerontological nursing through research.
Judith Hertz, who continues to study whether the ability of senior citizens feel in charge of their own lives improves their well-being, received her award Oct. 16 at the organization’s national convention and gala in Las Vegas.
Hertz and other NGNA honorees were announced publicly today.
“It was exciting,” said Hertz, whose “Perceived Autonomy, Social Support, Psychosocial Development Strengths, and Health in Older Adults” research project is being funded by a two-year, $100,000 grant from the John A. Hartford Foundation. “I submitted my research to the National Gerontological Nurses Association to present, and then it was selected as a finalist for the research award.”
Cindy Shemansky, president of the NGNA, called Hertz and the others “outstanding nursing professionals.”
“Through their genuine interest, concern and dedication, these individuals promote the specialty of gerontological nursing,” Shemansky said, “and enhance quality care for our nation’s older adults across all healthcare settings.”
Hertz’s study involves around 160 older adults living independently in apartments in the Chicago suburbs and in rural parts of northern Illinois. “All of these people are relatively healthy and living independently,” she said. “Some people want to be as independent as possible while other people would like to be independent in some areas but are more willing to depend on others.”
She asked them about their values, their needs and their goals, seeking to learn if their autonomy, their network of support and their personal strengths contribute to their health.
The answer, it turns out, is no.
“Indeed,” Hertz said, “that external social support, and those internal personal strengths that people develop through their lifetime, are significantly related to the perception of doing what’s best for yourself. But in this population, for some reason, how they rate their health is not related statistically to any of those factors.”
That discovery still interests her – and will lead her to more investigation.
“At first, I was a little distraught over those findings. As a nurse, I’m very concerned about health processes, and to think nothing was related to it was just disheartening,” she said. “But one of the reasons for doing this study is to better understand what health means to the older population who’s relatively healthy but dealing every day with chronic health problems.”
Her work from the last two years becomes “a preliminary and foundational piece to the next study I will do, which will be to test methods to support the autonomy and the health processes of that population.”
While a 2002-2004 John A. Hartford Foundation Building Academic Geriatric Nursing Capacity Post-Doctoral Scholar, Hertz (with NIU School of Nursing colleague Donna Munroe) also won a $200,000 grant from the Retirement Research Foundation of Chicago to help undergraduate nursing students learn more about caring for the aging population.
Hertz and Munroe began work in July on the two-year project to develop six interactive learning modules that present students and fellow faculty members with case studies involving geriatric patients and a computer-based library of resources.
The nursing school is part of the NIU College of Health and Human Sciences.
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