Karen F. Pridham, PhD, RN

Title: Professor
Phone: 263-9886
E-mail: kpridham@wisc.edu

H6/293
600 Highland Avenue
Madison, WI 53792-2455

Education:

Description of Research Focus:

Caregiving competence: What it is, how it is assessed, what supports it and how it develops, and its biological and psychosocial outcomes is the central topic of investigation. We study caregiving competence in mothers and family members of a population of children with special needs. Our longitudinal studies include children with very low birth-weight, hospital (neonatal intensive care unit), and home phases. The aim of these studies is to test interventions to support the development of competencies and to examine how competencies make a difference on such outcomes as dietary intake and growth. Our interdisciplinary team aids extension of the research to such topics as child feeding skills and respiration during during feeding, mother’infant interaction, and biochemical markers of dietary adequacy, and health.

Representative Publications:

Pridham, K. F., Limbo, R., Schroeder, M., Thoyre, S., & VanRiper, M. (in press). Guided participation and development of caregiving competencies for families of low birth-weight infants. Journal of Advanced Nursing.

Underwood, S., Pridham, K., Brown, L., Frazier, W., Clark, T., Schroeder, M., Limbo, R., & Thoyre, S. (in press). Infant feedings practices of low income African American women in a central city community. Journal of Community Health Nursing.

Pridham, K. F. (1997). Mothers’ help seeking as care initiated in a social context. IMAGE: Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 29 65-70.

Stephenson, G. R., Pridham, K. F., & Mlynarczyk, S. (1996). A computerized method of describing phase-related interactive events: Infant feeding as an example. Computers in Nursing, 14(2), 1-10.

Pridham, K. F., Denney, N., Pascoe, J., Chiu, Y. M., & Creasey, D. (1995). A study of mothers’ solutions to child-care problems. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 57(3), 785-799.

Poster Presentations

International Society on Infant Studies