Advance Planning for Home Services for Seniors

Study Summary

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 administere

Primary Outcome

The primary endpoint for this study is planning behavior score (ranging from 5-25 points; where higher values are considered to be a better outcome) at one month post-intervention/attention control as measured by the "Planning Implementation (Behavior)" assessment. The outcome measure will be assessed at baseline and one month from baseline. Primary endpoint analyses will consist of an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) comparing mean planning behavior score at one month post-intervention/attention

Interventions

• OTHER Plan Your Lifespan Website
• OTHER Go4Life Website