Christine M. Rini

Research

Dr. Rini is a social/health psychologist whose work focuses on personal and social resources that affect people's health and well-being in the context of cancer-related stressors.  For instance, her work has focused on protective personal characteristics such as optimism, past or current life stressors and social or interpersonal influences on health and adjustment -- that is, ways in which other people can be sources of assistance and support, stress and hindrance, information, and social influence or pressure. For instance, she is actively investigating how characteristics of social support attempts influence their effectiveness. Her past work in this area has shown that when pregnant women receive more effective support from their partner in early pregnancy, they experience less generalized anxiety and pregnancy-specific anxiety later in their pregnancy. She is currently working to extend these findings to new patient populations in several lines of funded research.

First, Dr. Rini is principal investigator on a National Cancer Institute-funded study of surgical decision making among inflammatory bowel disease patients at high risk for colorectal cancer. This line of research investigates patients' decision making and adjustment after they are referred for prophylactic colectomy, including the influence of spouses/partners as well as other medical and psychosocial factors. Second, she is principal investigator on an American Cancer Society-funded study that is testing a novel intervention developed to address the specific needs and difficulties reported by bone marrow transplant survivors. This intervention harnesses the reciprocal benefits of peer support. That is, it is based on the idea that transplant survivors benefit both from receiving social support from fellow transplant survivors and from providing it to people preparing for transplant. This line of research will also investigate the effects of survivors' stories on patient decision making and well-being and enable development of an informational resource for transplant patients.