Adapting and Testing the Care Partner Hospital Assessment Tool (CHAT) for Use in Dementia Care

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT This K23 application proposed a career development plan to help Dr. Beth Fields establish an independent research program that focuses on optimizing hospital-based care and outcomes for patients living with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) and their family member or friend care partners. She will train under the mentorship of a transdisciplinary group of senior scientists with research expertise in participatory human-centered design, conduct of clinical trials, and clinical ADRD care. She will continue working with her current mentors, Drs. Farrar-Edwards, Werner, and Shah, and Mr. Hetzel, all of whom have experience mentoring trainees. This will be complemented by content and mentoring expertise from Drs. Schulz and Gilmore-Bykovskyi. Collectively, this team will provide an outstanding training environment that will allow Dr. Fields to fill critical gaps in her knowledge and skill set relating to the study of hospital-based care processes and outcomes for patients living with ADRD and their care partners. Her training goals are to develop skills in (1) participatory human-centered design principles, (2) hospital-based ADRD care delivery, (3) clinical trial design and statistical analysis, (4) ethical and regulatory standards in ADRD research, and (5) professional skills in team science and scientific leadership. Achieving these goals will strengthen her scholarly activities, establish important collaborations, and acquire critical data that will ensure her successful transition to independence. To this end, Dr. Fields’ proposed research plan builds directly on her prior work developing and validating the Care Partner Hospital Assessment Tool (CHAT). Guided by the widely used and effective decision-support model of Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT), the CHAT applies a sequential screening and referral pathway that 1) identifies care partners and their preferences for inclusion in the patients’ hospital care and 2) tailors referrals to address their stated preferences and unmet needs for post-discharge preparedness. The SBIRT model was designed to adapt flexibly to different health conditions and contexts, thus enabling the adaptation of the CHAT to facilitate the inclusion and preparation of care partners of patients living with ADRD. Therefore, the purpose of this proposal is to adapt CHAT for care partners of hospitalized patients living with ADRD (CHAT-AD) and evaluate its feasibility and potential efficacy in a pilot randomized clinical trial. Findings from this study, in combination with the career development plan, will enable Dr. Fields to launch an independent program of research that aims to (1) improve hospital-based care processes and outcomes for patients living with ADRD and their care partners, and (2) elucidate the essential caregiving role that so many care partners of patients living with ADRD assume.