Jumpstart: Communication Priming Intervention

Drs. Erin Kross, associate professor, and J. Randall Curtis, professor (Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine) are dual principal investigators for a new 5-year, $7 million R01 award from National Institute on Aging, for their study, “Hybrid efficacy-effectiveness trial to promote goals-of-care discussions for patients with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias and their family caregivers.”

The study is a large pragmatic trial of a communication-priming intervention, called Jumpstart, to increase the occurrence and quality of goals-of-care discussions with patients with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias and their family caregivers.

The study will be conducted in primary and specialty clinics across UW Medicine to facilitate communication and receipt of medical care consistent with patients’ goals.

The study is being conducted in collaboration with the UW Alzheimer’s Dementia Research Center and the UW Memory and Brain Wellness Center.

This award builds on prior work of the Jumpstart program, which has been studied in both inpatient and outpatient settings across UW Medicine and incorporates adaptations to Jumpstart specific to patients living with dementia and their caregivers.

Department of Medicine contributors: Ruth Engelberg (Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine), Barak Gaster, and Rashmi Sharma (General Internal Medicine).

Other contributors: Lyndia Brumback (Biostatistics), Trevor Cohen (Bioinformatics and Medical Education), Kimiko Domoto-Reilly (Neurology), William Lober (Biobehavioral Nursing and Health Informatics), and Bryan Weiner (Global Health).