Pilot Pragmatic Clinical Trial to Embed Tele-Savvy Into Health Care Systems

Summary

This cluster randomized pragmatic clinical trial will test the effectiveness and feasibility of embedding the Tele-Savvy intervention, a psychoeducational program for family and other informal caregivers of older adults living in the community with Alzheimer's disease and related dementia (ADRD), in two health care systems/clinical sites: UConn Health in Farmington, Connecticut, and Emory Healthcare in Atlanta, Georgia.

Conditions

• Alzheimer Disease
• Dementia
• Brain Diseases
• Central Nervous System Diseases
• Nervous System Diseases
• Tauopathies
• Neurocognitive Disorders
• Neurodegenerative Diseases
• Mental Disorders

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Tele-Savvy

A low-risk, psychoeducational, group-based intervention, is grounded in social learning and stress process theory and its main goal is to produce improved caregiver mastery over the symptom management skills commonly encountered when supervising and caring at home for an older adult living with ADRD. Over the 7-week program, there are synchronous and asynchronous activities each week. The synchronous portion includes weekly scheduled videoconferences (60-80 min) that serve as an online classroom in which facilitators lead lectures and discussions. Daily, caregivers access online 6- to 15-min prerecorded videos, each focused on one main learning objective. Caregivers can watch the lessons whenever and as often as they wish.

BEHAVIORAL

Caregiving During Crisis (Educational Program)

The attention control group will receive the self-guided Caregiving During Crisis program. Caregiving During Crisis is a fully online, asynchronous, professionally designed continuing education course aimed at developing the competency of informal caregivers of community-dwelling persons living with dementia to ensure the safety of that person and themselves during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic. The course, readily accessible by home computer or smartphone, describes methods of home infection control and prevention to create a Safe Home space, strategies for safely leaving and re-entering the home (e.g., to shop), additional strategies for safely allowing service personnel (e.g., home health aides or electricians) and select family members to enter the Safe Home space, and risk management strategies to frame decisions when/if COVID restrictions are relaxed or revoked.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Emory University

  collaborator OTHER

• UConn Health

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Richard H. Fortinsky, PhD · UConn Health

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

OTHER

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

110 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2021-09-28

Primary Completion

2023-06-05

Completion

2023-06-05

Countries

• United States

Study Locations