Diabetes

Our National Academy Members

Diabetes

Sue Butkus
Cynthia F. Corbett
Stephen Setter
Robert Short

Cynthia F. Corbett

Dr. Cynthia F. Corbett received her B.A. in nursing (1985) from Carroll College, a master of nursing from Whitworth College (1989), and a Ph.D. in nursing from Loyola University of Chicago in 1998. Dr. Corbett’s interest in diabetes developed while working with home health care patients of whom one-third had diabetes. She has since been committed to improving provider and self-management interventions through research. Dr. Corbett’s research has been funded by Sigma Theta Tau International, the American Nurses Foundation, and the American Association of Diabetes Educators. From a national applicant pool, an independent academic advisory board recently selected Dr. Corbett as one of two U.S. Pharmaceuticals, Pfizer, Inc. 2002 Innovations in Health Outcomes Postdoctoral Fellows. The fellowship affords Dr. Corbett the opportunity to focus the majority of her time on diabetes and health outcomes research for two calendar years.

Nursing
Cynthia F. Corbett
Behavioral Strategies to Improve Chronic Illness Management

Cynthia F. Corbett

The population of older Americans with chronic diseases is expanding. The number of persons with diabetes is expected to rise by 165 percent during the next fifty years. For adults aged 75 and older the number of persons with diabetes will quadruple, increasing more than 200 percent. The majority of morbidity, mortality, and costs associated with diabetes may be preventable with better provider and self-management. Dr. Cynthia Corbett’s research focuses on behavioral strategies to improve chronic illness management and resultant outcomes.

Major goals of Dr. Corbett’s research are to:

Test innovative diabetes management interventions;
Examine the impact of community-based point-of-care testing (e.g., A1c, lipids);
Refine diabetes quality of life measures to improve outcome evaluation;
Explore strategies to cost-effectively integrate data-based findings into routine health practices.

Currently, Dr. Corbett and a multi-disciplinary team of collaborators are conducting a randomized clinical trial involving older adults with diabetes who reside in independent living communities. The effect of a standardized chronic illness management intervention on physiologic, psychosocial, and health care utilization outcomes is being evaluated. Specifically, outcomes such as A1c, lipids, blood pressure, quality of life, demands of illness, confidence in self-management, and health care utilization will be analyzed. In a separate study, she is leading a research team to refine a measure of diabetes demands of illness and explore the relationship between perceived illness demands and depression in older adults with diabetes. Dr. Corbett’s prior diabetes research has been in the home health care arena. The findings of these studies have been widely disseminated at conferences and in home health care journals with resultant evidence of clinical practice changes in the industry.

Contact Information
Dr. Cynthia Lou Corbett, Ph.D
Assistant Professor

Intercollegiate College of Nursing
2917 W Fort George Wright Drive
Spokane, WA 99224-5291

Telephone: 509-324-7284
E-mail: corbett@wsu.edu

Contact us: research@wsu.edu 509-335-9141 | Accessibility | Copyright | Policies
Office of Research, PO BOX 641033, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, 99164-1033 USA