Bio-Behavioral Research and Intervention Lab

This project explores how parents of children with complex medical conditions (e.g. congenital heart defects, pediatric cancer, eating disorders) adjust their coping strategies throughout the illness trajectory.  In this project we aim to establish the proper theoretical conceptualization of coping flexibility for optimal prediction of parental illness adaptation outcomes.  The project incorporates data-driven approaches with artificial intelligence (AI) tools to develop predictive models of optimal coping process, as a foundation for a personalized e-health application to guide caregivers to adjust their coping process in real time.

This project investigates the inter- and intra- emotion regulation strategies utilized by healthcare professionals (e.g. nurses, midwives, physicians, direct care supporters, and clinical instructors) in emotionally intense, stressful clinical interactions. We seek to understand how caregivers' emotions, and flexibility in emotion regulation affect the caregivers' and patients' outcomes, and the quality of care provided. Insights from this project can inform models of care designed to foster emotional support and ethical care in healthcare settings. In this project we collaborate with the Geriatric Nursing Services of the Ministry of Health, and multiple hospitals throughout the country. 

This project focuses on formal and informal caregivers of populations with special healthcare needs (children with cognitive and developmental disabilities, Autism, Geriatric populations) in community residential settings. We aim to identify caregivers' cognitive and behavioral strategies, serving as key resilience indicators, in their attempts to prevent and/or reduce adverse events prevalent in these populations (safety issues, home accidents, challenging behaviors, missed care). This project facilitates the development of community-based supportive care frameworks and systems for individuals with long-term healthcare needs in residential settings. This project is a collaboration with the Disability Administration, Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs, and the Geriatric Nursing Services of the Ministry of Health. 

In collaboration with the National Nursing Ethics Bureau, this project is led by the Nursing Resilience Forum at the university of Haifa, which is dedicated to studying psychological, organizational, and clinical resilience in nursing and healthcare systems. Within this collaborative framework, we established a research consortium of Israeli  academic and healthcare organizations addressing the role of nursing leadership in strengthening organizational resilience during crises. The project, examines how nurse managers mediate between frontline clinical teams and regulatory bodies during global and national health emergencies such as pandemics and war conflicts. We seek to understand ethical dilemmas and organizational responses, identify key lessons for improving future emergency preparedness, balancing the needs of frontline teams with regulatory demands, and strengthening organizational resilience.