Susan M. Allen, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Medical Science in the Department of Community Health and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology. She is also Deputy Director of the Center for Gerontology and Health Care Research, and a core faculty member of the Population Studies and Training Center. Dr Allen has a long history of studying the patterns and outcomes of care received in the home setting by elderly and working aged adults with chronic conditions and disabilities. Her research has focused on both formal and family caregiving, and on the implications of unmet need for help at home for quality of life and chronic condition management among populations with disabilities. As a follow up to her earlier work demonstrating that unmet need had immediate negative consequences (e.g., falling) that were detrimental to the health of people who need assistance, Dr Allen is conducting secondary analyses of the Longitudinal Study on Aging II to investigate the long term consequences of unmet need, in terms of injury, functional decline, hospitalization and nursing home placement. This study was funded as an R01 from the National Institute on Aging. She has also extended her work in the field of community-based care to include the use of assistive technology and home accommodations by both working age and elderly populations. Dr. Allen has demonstrated an inverse association between use of mobility equipment and levels of human help in a national sample of people with mobility impairment. Similarly, she has found the use of home accommodations to be negatively associated with human assistance in a national sample of people who use wheelchairs. Together, these findings suggest a substitution effect of assistive technology for human help that has substantial implications for policy as well as for the promotion of independence in disabled populations.

In addition to her research in the fields of aging and disability, Dr. Allen has studied the psychosocial outcomes of women with breast cancer. She completed a National Cancer Institute-funded randomized trial of a problem-solving based home care intervention that was successful in reducing stress and unmet need in a variety of areas among women diagnosed with breast cancer under the age of 50. She will soon begin a study of doctor-patient communication regarding fertility issues prior to cancer treatment in this population, also funded by the National Cancer Institute. She has served as a standing member of the NIH study section for health services research, and as an ad hoc member of study sections at the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research. She has also served as a national advisory panel member for projects funded by the Health Care Financing Administration, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Selected Publications

Aging and Disability:

Allen SM, Resnik L, Roy J. Promoting independence for wheelchair users who live alone: The role of home accommodations. Gerontologist, in press.

Resnik L, Allen SM. Racial disparities in the use of assistive devices for mobility. Journal of Aging and Health, in press.

Allen SM, Ciambrone D (2003). Community care for people with disability: Blurring boundaries between formal and informal caregivers. Qualitative Health Research 134(2): 207-226.

Berg K, Hines M, Allen SM (2002). Wheelchair users at home: Few home modifications and many injurious falls. American Journal of Public Health 92(1): p.48.

Allen SM, Foster A, Berg K (2001). Receiving help at home: The interplay of human and technological assistance. Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences 56B(6): S374-S382.

Lima J, Allen SM (2001). Targeting risk for unmet need: Not enough help versus no help at all. Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences 56B(5): S302-S310.

Cancer:

Duffy CM, Allen SM, Clark MA (2005). Discussions regarding reproductive health for young women with breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy. Journal of Clinical Oncology 23(4): 766-773.

Allen SM, Shah AC, Nezu AM, Nezu CM, Ciambrone D, Hogan J, Mor V (2002). A problem-solving approach to stress reduction among younger women with breast cancer: A randomized controlled trial. Cancer 94(12).

Allen SM, Petrisek A, Laliberte L (2001). Problems in communication between physicians and younger women with breast cancer. Critical Public Health 11(1).