Making Connections Thru Music

Summary

Healthcare systems around the world, including within the United States, have long-established shortages of trained caregivers. The American Health Care Association states that "the health care system has experienced a shortage of trained caregivers for critical roles for some time." This scarcity directly impacts the 45,800 Long-Term Care (LTC) communities throughout the U.S.

Concurrent with this staff shortage, more than half of LTC residents have some form of dementia. These two issues create a serious public health concern, since dementia is associated with a variety of behavioral expressions, such as aggression, anxiety, and agitation. Behavioral expressions of dementia can be successfully managed with the use of tailored, psychosocial interventions and communication support. Unfortunately, existing staff shortages make the facilitation of such interventions challenging.

One powerful and often-overlooked approach to ameliorating staffing shortages involves the utilization of retired volunteers to facilitate interventions for persons with dementia (PWD). Based on the nearly universal love of music and a promising pilot study, the product to be developed and tested in this STTR will build upon the combined prior work of the Principal Investigators. Making Connections Thru Music (MCTM), an urgently needed product, will enable retired volunteers to facilitate an evidence-based music and discussion intervention with PWD. MCTM aims to improve engagement, enhance quality of life, and reduce behavioral expressions in PWD. The intervention will consist of two main components: (1) a comprehensive online training course for volunteers, which will provide a general overview of dementia, demonstrate effective communication strategies to use with PWD, and instruct volunteers to effectively facilitate MCTM sessions, and (2) an app containing a structured MCTM intervention protocol and toolkit, which will be the means by which volunteers facilitate MCTM. MCTM will be marketed to LTC communities.

Conditions

• Dementia
• Alzheimer Disease
• Vascular Dementia

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Volunteer Led Making Connections Thru Music

Volunteer led Group music therapy-based intervention

BEHAVIORAL

Staff Led Making Connections Thru Music

Staff led Group music therapy-based intervention

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging

  collaborator OTHER

• Hopeful Aging

  lead INDUSTRY

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

103 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2025-07-01

Primary Completion

2025-09-30

Completion

2025-09-30

Countries

• United States

Study Locations