Purdue Today

The gap between care and need for help in basic daily activities by one-fifth of community-living older adults will provide the focus of Professor Laura Sands' message April 5 in the Department of Statistics' Myra Samuels Memorial Lecture.

Sands, the Katherine Birck Professor of Nursing, will speak on "Consequences of Insufficient Care for Disabilities: Insights Developed from Evaluation of Claims Data." The daily activities in question include bathing, eating, dressing, toileting and getting around inside, and 20 percent of older adults who need help with them do not have sufficient help.

The presentation will provide evidence of the costly and devastating consequences. Findings will be discussed in terms of limitations and benefits of using claims data to describe the practice and policy significance of insufficient help.

The event will open with refreshments at 10 a.m. in Haas Hall, Room 111. The lecture will follow at 10:30-11:30 a.m. in Stanley Coulter Hall, Room 239. The event is free and open to the public.

Sands is also director of research in Purdue's School of Nursing. In her research, she specializes in research methods, health services research and gerontology. She also teaches and works with graduate students in several departments.

Myra Samuels was associate professor of biostatistics and epidemiology in Purdue's Department of Veterinary Pathobiology and associate director of statistical consulting in the Department of Statistics. The author of a still popular textbook, "Statistics for the Life Sciences," she taught at Purdue for 24 years before her death in 1992.