Dr. James Lubben

D

r. James Lubben, DSW, MPH - is Professor Emeritus at UCLA where he taught for 20 years and was the former Chair of the Department of Social Welfare.  Dr. Lubben is the inaugural holder the Louise McMahon Ahearn Chair at Boston College in the Graduate School of Social Work where for the last 5 years he has served as the Chair of the doctoral program in social work.  Dr. Lubben is also the National Director of the Hartford Doctoral Fellows Program in Geriatric Social Work that is funded by the John A. Hartford Foundation of New York City and administered by the Gerontological Society of America.

Dr. Lubben also serves on the National Program Advisory Board for the Hartford Faculty Scholars Program. He served for four terms (a total of 12 years) on the congressionally mandated Nationally Advisory Committee on Gerontology and Geriatrics for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.  In 2002, the Association for Gerontology Education in Social Work (AGE-SW) presented him with their Leadership Award.  In 2006 he received an honorary doctor of humane letters from his alma mater, Wartburg College (Iowa).

Dr. Lubben is a leading scholar in social gerontology with an active research agenda examining social support networks among older populations.  He developed the Lubben Social Network Scale (LSNS), an abbreviated measure designed for both research and clinical use among older populations.  The LSNS has been translated into many languages and employed in studies in Asia, Australia, Europe and North America.  Scores on the LSNS have been associated with many indicators of health including mortality, morbidity, psychological distress and loneliness, cognitive impairment, and various indicators of health care use.

Dr. Lubben has actively promoted the development of both gerontology and social work by serving as a principal investigator or collaborator on over $32 million (direct costs) of research and training grants. He was the principal investigator on a National Institute of Aging (NIA) longitudinal panel study of social supports and long-term care among older Korean Americans.  He was also co-principal investigator on a number of other NIA funded studies. Dr. Lubben was a principal investigator on a seven year Health Care Financing Administration clinical trial evaluating the benefits of health promotion for Medicare elderly persons. He was co-principal investigator on a series of cross-cultural studies that surveyed Japanese and Chinese American elderly in Los Angeles and conducted comparable surveys in Japan, China and Hong Kong.  Prof Lubben has been a visiting scholar in Canada, Chile, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and the U.K.

Selected Publications

1. Crooks, VC, Lubben, JE, Petti, DB, Little, D & Chiu, V. (2008). Social Network, Cognitive Function and Dementia Incidence in Elderly Women. American Journal of Public Health, 98(7):1221-1227 .
2. Damron-Rodriguez, J.A., & Lubben, J. (2007). Family and community health care for older persons. In S. Carmel, F. Torrres-Gil, & C. Morris (Eds.) with J. Damron-Rodriguez, S. Feldman, and T. Seedsman (Co- Eds.) The Art of Aging Well: Lessons from Three Nations. New York:  Baywood Publishing Co. pp. 75-90.
3. Lubben, JE, Blozik, E, Gillmann, G, Iliffe, S, Kruse, WR, Beck, JC, Stuck, AE. (2006). Performance of an Abbreviated Version of the Lubben Social Network Scale among Three European Community-Dwelling Older Adult Populations. The Gerontologist. 46(4):503–513.
4. Lubben, JE. (2006). Abbreviated and Targeted Geriatric Assessment.  Berkman, B. (Ed.) Handbook of Social Work in Health and Aging.  New York: Oxford University Press.  pp. 729-735.
5. Lubben, JE. & Damron-Rodriguez, J. (2006). World population Aging.  Berkman, B. (Ed.) Handbook of Social Work in Health and Aging.  New York: Oxford University Press.  pp. 939-944.
6. Min, J.W., Moon, A. & Lubben, JE. (2005). Determinants of psychological distress over time among older Korean immigrants and Non-Hispanic White elders: Evidence from a two-wave panel study. Aging & Mental Health, 9(3): 210-222.
7. Lubben, JE. & Gironda, MW. (2003) Centrality of Social Ties to the Health and Well Being of Older Adults.  Berkman, B & Harootyan, LK (Eds.) Social Work and Health Care in an Aging World. New York: Springer. pp 319-350.
8. Lubben, JE & Damron-Rodriguez. (2003). An International Approach to Community Health Care for Older Adults.  Family and Community Health. 26(4): 338-349.
9. Gironda, M and Lubben, J. (2002). "Preventing Loneliness and Isolation in Older Adulthood". In T. Gullotta and M. Bloom (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Primary Prevention and Health Promotion. New York: Kluwer Academic / Plenum Publishers.  pp 20-34.
10. Damron-Rodriguez, J. & Lubben, J.E.  (2001). A Framework For Understanding Community Health Care In Ageing Societies. Kobe, Japan: WHO Centre for Health Development Ageing and Health Technical Report Series.

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