Research

Our Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Program (GWEP), sponsored by HRSA, has a range of educational, research and advocacy components, all with the mission to educate and train the future geriatric workforce: healthcare providers, interprofessional health profession students and residents, and underserved older adults, caregivers and families.

This statewide initiative led by the University of California, San Francisco, in partnership with UCI, provides training, tools and resources for primary care providers on conducting cognitive health assessments. The initiative offers training opportunities through ECHO sessions, webinars, podcasts and region-specific events. Visit dementiacareaware.org.

Supported by a National Science Foundation grant, this project aims to enhance and transform the resilience of older adults in our communities during disasters. This population group is often severely impacted during large events due to the lack of effective triage, comfort and care. Through the use of a smart-space platform called CareDEX, this effort will enable the rapid assimilation and exchange of customized care information between first responders, caregivers in senior housing facilities and older adults in a secure manner.

“[CareDEX] grants us an unprecedented opportunity to manage the custody of critical care information in our service to those who are the most vulnerable in our stewardship. It is a partnership between technology and medicine and a beacon of hope to the elderly in distress.”

— Scott Gregory, Deputy Director of Technology, CalFire

The generous support of the Archstone Foundation has supported the design and planning of our student-led and student-staffed Digital Health Engagement Learning Center. The new Center, which opened in 2023, enables computer science, information science, pharmacy, engineering, public health, biological science and other health-related UCI students to volunteer alongside our UCI medical and nursing students to promote digital health literacy. We are researching and piloting strategies to support older adults in waiting rooms, leading to improved MyChart interaction, provider messaging, and navigation of telehealth visits and remote patient monitoring.

The UCI Center of Excellence on Elder Abuse and Neglect (EAFC) is partnering with Orange County Adult Protective Services (APS) and the Health Care Agency’s Office of the Public Guardian to develop a person-centered program to disrupt the cycle of elder and dependent adult abuse (EDDA) for Public Guardian clients. This program, Ending and Disrupting Elder Abuse Recidivism (ENDEAR) for Person-Centered APS – Community Transitions, focuses on APS clients who have been referred to the Public Guardian for determinations of guardianship and provides coordinated case management for victims/survivors.
 

Connecting persons with dementia and their caregivers to social workers to provide services and support within and outside of the medical systems.

Dementia has staggering social and economic consequences, and models of care are needed to address the triple aims for this disease: improved quality of care, patient and caregiver satisfaction, and decreased costs. To address this need and with prior UniHealth funding, we developed a pilot program for the care management of patients with dementia (PWD), utilizing interns from local undergraduate social work programs in partnership with Alzheimer’s Orange County (AlzOC), a major community organization dedicated to the care of individuals with dementia and their loved ones.

During our pilot program — A Comprehensive Agile Response Team for Dementia Health Care (CART-DC)  — we articulated workflows between the organizations, developed curriculum for the interns, tested our evaluation program and successfully enrolled PWD and their caregiver dyads into the program. We expanded this model into the SWIFT-DC program: Social Work Interventions for Transforming Dementia Care. This model used social work interns from the Geriatric Social Work Education Consortium (GSWEC) and was coordinated by a social worker supervisor at AlzOC. The GSWEC was an integrated network of Southern California Schools of Social Work with the aim of connecting interns who are highly motivated to pursue careers in geriatric care with dyads of PWD and their caregivers from a UCI dementia registry. The interns conducted focused assessments to form individual care plans for the dyads, providing person-centered support for at least one year. If dyads continued to have ongoing needs, further support was provided.

Social work intern training included education on dementia-related behaviors, medication review, environmental fall assessment and social determinants of health. Measurable outcomes for dyads included changes in caregiver burden, neuropsychiatric symptoms, functional status and utilization of healthcare services, in addition to satisfaction with the intern program by clients, healthcare providers and AlzOC staff. The development of this innovative model integrating a healthcare system and community organization allowed for better responses to the unique needs of PWD and their caregivers at their time of need.

• Project timeframe: July 2019 – June 2022
• Sponsor: UniHealth Foundation
• PI: Dr. Steven Tam
• Co-PI: Dr. Lisa Gibbs

Advance care planning (ACP) is the discussion of end-of-life preferences between the patient and their physician. ACP can help patients receive the care that matches their values. An advance directive is a legal document where patients specify their care preferences.

The UC Health Care Planning study examined different ways to help patients complete advanced directives, with the goal of helping other clinics determine how to encourage advanced care planning. The ultimate goal was to improve end-of-life care for patients.

• Project timeframe: December 2017 – November 2023
• Project sponsor: Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI)
• Project PIs: Dr. Lisa Gibbs and Dr. Maryam Rahimi

In the face of the devastating COVID-19 pandemic, we quickly pivoted to provide telehealth visits to our older adult patients. We recognized the need to research the use and implementation of remote patient monitoring (RPM) to care for our vulnerable patients managing complex chronic diseases at home. We built the first EPIC-embedded RPM program at UCI Health and successfully piloted our team-based program.

Sought to develop a more responsive workforce educated in individual and population-based care.

This study showed that mistreatment of people with dementia is prevalent and that it can be associated with certain characteristics in a caregiver and a person with dementia.

A predecessor to SWIFT-DC, this program sought to develop a healthcare delivery model with the flexibility to respond to the unique needs of patients with dementia. By combining community and healthcare resources, the program aimed to improve the quality of care, increase patient and caregiver satisfaction, and decrease costs associated with caring for people with dementia.

A two-part study funded by the Archstone Foundation aimed at improving the quality of data collected on elder abuse in California.

A study funded by the National Institute of Justice, which concluded that nearly 90% of accidental bruises in older adults occur on the extremities. Phase II of the study concluded that bruises from physical abuse are significantly larger and tend to be on the face, the lateral and anterior sides of the arm, or the upper and lower back.

A project funded by the National Institute on Aging to develop and test a self-reported, survey-based measure that can be used to generate population estimates of elder abuse.