Advance Planning for Home Services for Seniors

Completed · Not applicable

Conditions studied: Alzheimers, Falls, Aging in Place

In brief

The goal of this study is to develop and test an advance planning tool to help seniors understand projected health needs and plan ways to remain in their own homes when these crises occur. In this phase of the study through partnerships with seniors, senior community groups, area agencies on aging, and home care agencies the investigators are conducting a two-armed (attention control and intervention) randomized controlled trial. Individuals will be randomly assigned to one of two interventions: attention control or the advance planning tool. The investigators attention control group will control for the possibility that regular contact with the study team may improve outcomes in participants randomized to the intervention website. Participants in the attention control arm will navigate an electronic educational session via a National Institute on Aging at NIH Web site about physical activity and exercise as it is a topic of interest to seniors. A minimum of 15 minutes and a maximum of 45 minutes will be allotted for navigating the Web site. The Web site is interactive and comparable to the intervention tool: http://go4life.nia.nih.gov/get-started). If randomized to intervention, subjects will be introduced to the advance planning tool, the Plan Your Lifespan website, and given instructions on how to use it. Plan Your Lifespan is a Web-based planning tool that provides information for seniors related to advanced health planning for home services in specific content areas of: hospitalizations, falls, Alzheimer's, dementia, as well as communicating with others. The Plan Your Lifespan website is also interactive in that it allows participants to enter their information and share it with others to facilitate conversations and decision-making. Participants will navigate and complete the Web-based advance planning tool and will be allotted a minimum of 15 minutes and a maximum of 45 minutes to navigate the tool as part of the study. All participants will be administered a pre- and post-test before and after viewing the website they were randomized to. All participants will be followed up at one and three months post via a brief phone call where follow-up questions will be asked of all participants.

Key facts

Study ID

NCT02256072

Run by

Northwestern University

People needed

385

Starts

2014-09-01

Expected to finish

2016-06-01

Last updated by the study team

2017-04-14

Who can join

Age: 65 and older. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: accepted.

You may qualify if…

• Age 65 and older
• English speaking
• Score ≥ 4 questions correctly on the Brief Cognitive screener
• Self-identified comfort using a computer
• Self-identified comfort using the Internet to navigate a Website
• Have not previously participated in study's focus groups or pilot study

You may not qualify if…

• Less than age 65
• Non-English speaking
• Score < 4 questions correctly on the Brief Cognitive screener
• Not comfortable using a computer
• Not comfortable using the Internet to navigate a Website
• Previous participation in this study's focus groups or pilot study

Where it is running

• Northwestern University — Chicago, Illinois, United States
• Aging & In-Home Services of Northeast Indiana — Fort Wayne, Indiana, United States

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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