Self-Help Support Groups For Older Women

This work is based upon a research study whose purpose was to collect new information about the special benefits and drawbacks of formal organizations' efforts at social network building for older women. In it, a two-tiered investigation was carried out: a national review of a select group of model self-help support programmes for older women throughout the United States; and an in-depth community case study of a nationally recognized model program of self-help support groups, leadership training, networking and community outreach/education for older women. It provides the research-oriented reader with scientific evidence to assess the relative efficacy of self-help group programming.

Dewey G. Meyers, now assistant professor of biology at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, was NASA research associate in the Space Biology Program working at the University of Pennsylvania and an honorary post-doctoral fellow at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. His research interests include aquatic ecology, ecology and evolution of zooplankton communities, invertebrate physiology, predatorprey interactions, and carnivorous-plant ecology. J. Rudi Strickler is principal research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science. His specialties are limnology, biological oceanography, and the ecology of planktonic copepods using high-speed cinematography and holography.