A University of Hawaii at Hilo researcher hopes a $2.7 million Department of Defense grant will help ease the stresses put on families when a loved one is deployed with the military.
“The ultimate goal of this project is to better understand the effects of military deployment on family functioning in order to develop and guide support programs for these families,” said Charmaine Higa-McMillan, an associate professor of psychology at UH-Hilo and principal investigator for the the Ohana Heroes Project on the Big Island.
Stress as a result of having a loved one on deployment can take several forms, she said.
“You can have the parents seeing anxiety, with fears and worries about the other parent who is gone, are they going to come back, and what will that be like? And then you can have the children experiencing separation fears, they don’t want to be separated from the parent, and they may start to worry about losing their second parent,” she said.
Beginning Monday, research project staff will collect data from volunteer families, she said.
In addition to asking families to participate in interviews and fill out surveys, researchers will look at objective evidence, such as observing sleep patterns and collecting samples of their saliva.
“We look at cortisol levels, which is a stress hormone. When we get really stressed, if we’re worried about something or someone, our bodies produce more. Our bodies produce it throughout the day,” Higa-McMillan said.
“We’re trying to recruit 150 children and families across the Big Island and Oahu,” she added.
While Oahu obviously has a larger population of military families from which to choose, the study will also rely on collecting data from nonmilitary families to provide a control group with which to compare the results.
A multisite study, UH-Hilo will split the funding with partners at the University of Central Florida and the University of Houston.
For more information, visit ohanaheroes.com, email contact@ohanaheroes.com or call 933-3861 on Hawaii Island or 365-4624 on Oahu.
Email Colin M. Stewart at cstewart@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
