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Caregiver BurnoutNCT04346745

Volunteering Program for Chinese Dementia Caregivers

A study testing Peer Mentoring Program in people with Caregiver Burnout, run by Columbia University at 1 site in United States.

Completed

Finished. The study has ended and is not enrolling. Results may be posted on the official record.

Official record
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Trial summary

Although many older Chinese Americans are expected to need intensive care because of cognitive impairment, a large gap exists in development of culturally sensitive interventions to reduce stress among caregivers in Chinese American communities. Read more about this study

Who is it for?
Ages 21 years and olderHealthy volunteers can take part
Conditions the study is for
Caregiver Burnout
What is being tested?
Peer Mentoring Program
Could I receive a placebo?
No, everyone receives an active treatment
How many people
38 participants
Where
1 siteUnited States
Study dates
1 Jul 2019to 31 Mar 2022
Phase
Interventional
Are there results?
Yes, posted in the registrySummary in the doctors' view

Key requirements

Who can take part, as listed by the sponsor. Only the study team can confirm whether you are eligible, so take this list to your doctor.

  • Ages 21 years and older
  • All sexes
  • Healthy volunteers accepted
  • Adult, Older adult

Who may be able to join

  • The caregivers will be recruited if they:
  • self-identify as Chinese
  • are 21 years old or older
  • speak Mandarin or Cantonese Chinese
  • provide care to a family member with dementia or cognitive impairment related to dementia for 10 hours or more a week
  • are interested in receiving peer mentoring
Show all 17Show fewer
  • report moderate to severe caregiver burden
  • can access a telephone and communicate via phone call.
  • The volunteer mentors will be recruited if they:
  • are 50 years old or older
  • self-identify as Chinese
  • speak Mandarin or Cantonese Chinese
  • have experience providing care to a family member with dementia or cognitive impairment related to dementia
  • can access a telephone and communicate via phone call
  • can attend volunteering training in person
  • agree to volunteer as a mentor with minimal financial compensation
  • agree to the time commitment required by the program.

Who cannot join

  • do not self-identify as Chinese
  • do not speak Mandarin or Cantonese Chinese

Trial locations and contacts

1 site in 1 country.

United States1 site
  • Columbia University

    New York, New York, 10027

Other trials in United States

About this study

Official title: Developing a Culturally-sensitive Volunteering Program to Reduce Stress of Dementia Caregivers in Chinese American Communities

Although many older Chinese Americans are expected to need intensive care because of cognitive impairment, a large gap exists in development of culturally sensitive interventions to reduce stress among caregivers in Chinese American communities. This research project will develop and pilot test a culturally sensitive intervention, the peer mentoring program (PMP), which is informed by the sociocultural stress and coping model. This project will generate preliminary data for a larger randomized controlled trial for efficacy or effectiveness testing of PMP, which is an innovative intervention to support dementia among Chinese Americans, by empowering the existing human resources of experiential caregivers in the same ethnic community.

Read the detailed description

Providing care for a family member with Alzheimer's disease and related dementia (ADRD) negatively affects caregivers' physical and mental health.Despite numerous studies on developing interventions for ADRD family caregivers of Caucasian Americans, it is not clear what interventions are effective in reducing the stress of family caregivers of Asian Americans. The purpose of this study is to develop a culturally sensitive and effective intervention to reduce the stress of dementia caregivers of Chinese Americans. It is necessary to prioritize Chinese American ADRD caregiving research because of: (a) the increasing needs of ADRD caregivers of Chinese Americans, the largest and fastest-growing ethnic group of Asians in the United States; (b) erroneous conclusions about Chinese American health in current research and policy practices due to omission, aggregation, and extrapolation; (c) health inequality issues ignored by the "model minority" stereotype of Asian Americans in general; (d) mental health vulnerabilities of older Chinese Americans; and (e) unresolved challenges of Chinese American caregivers such as lack of health literacy, concerns about stigma, failure to maintain family harmony, social isolation, and barriers to accessing culturally competent services. Given these concerns and the lack of health professionals who can speak Chinese and understand Chinese culture and norms, this study aims to develop a peer mentoring program to support dementia caregivers by empowering the human resources of experiential caregivers in Chinese American communities.

Informed by the sociocultural stress and coping model and relevant empirical evidence, the investigators designed the Peer Mentoring Program (PMP) to train and monitor experiential caregivers in providing mentoring support for caregivers in the same ethnic community. Experiential caregivers in the same ethnic community could understand the caregiving journey embedded in Chinese cultural values and the international migration experience. In the PMP, experiential caregivers will be hired and trained as volunteer peer mentors and monitored in providing mentoring support to dementia caregivers to address cultural beliefs about dementia and family caregiving, develop culturally effective coping strategies, and enhance culturally appropriate social support. The intervention is promising given the needs of Chinese caregivers, positive results of a previous trial in a senior volunteer program in Chinese Americans communities, benefits of volunteering for older adults, preliminary analysis results of data from our pilot study (70% Chinese caregivers reported a desire to receive peer mentoring support), and the potential of developing a cost-effective and sustainable intervention that could be applied in other racial and ethnic minority communities.

This proposed study will use a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach based on a partnership of multidisciplinary researchers, health professionals, family caregivers and older volunteers in NYC to accomplish Stage 0 (Aim1) and Stage I (Aims 2 and 3) for behavioral intervention development and to develop Stage II and/or Stage IV (Aim 3).

Aim 1: To study the challenges and enablers of successful caregiving for persons with ADRD in Chinese American communities in New York City (NYC). The investigators will analyze recently collected data from in-depth interviews and questionnaire-based surveys to identify robust challenges, barriers, resources, and successful coping strategies among these caregivers, which will help develop the PMP intervention manual.

Aim 2: To develop the PMP intervention protocol. Using the analysis results from Aim 1 in collaboration with multidisciplinary researchers and professionals, I will develop the volunteer training manual, intervention protocol, and screening and evaluation tools.

Aim 3: To examine the feasibility and acceptability of PMP. A pilot randomized clinical trial of five volunteers and 30 caregivers (15 to intervention, 15 to control) will be conducted. Qualitative and quantitative data from caregivers, volunteers, and professional collaborators will be collected to evaluate feasibility and acceptability of recruitment, randomization, intervention adherence, treatment fidelity, and administration of measures. Based on the results of feasibility and acceptability test, The investigators will refine the intervention and inform a subsequent larger randomized control trial (RCT) to initiate an efficacy or hybrid stage of intervention development.

Being tested
Peer Mentoring Program
Keywords
Chinese, Volunteering, Peer mentoring, dementia caregivers, mental health, stress
Medical subject headings
Caregiver Burden, Psychological Well-Being

What participants receive

What participants receive. In a randomised study each person is assigned to one group by chance.

  • Peer Mentoring ProgramBehavioural

    The Peer Mentoring Program (PMP) is a 3-month intervention to provide one-on-one mentoring support via phone calls to reduce the stress of Chinese dementia caregivers. The PMP will address the following topics: cultural beliefs about dementia and family caregiving, culturally effective coping strategies, and culturally appropriate social support.

Study groups in NCT04346745
Study groupRoleWhat they receive
Treatment groupExperimentalThe treatment group will receive intervention of a peer mentoring program plus usual services they could receive from community agencies.
Receives: Behavioral: Peer Mentoring Program
Control groupNo interventionThe control group received a package of educational materials on knowledge of dementia, caregiving skills.

What is being measured

The primary outcome is the main question the study is designed to answer.

  1. Caregiver Burden Score at Month 3 and Month 9

    This outcome will be measured by Zarit's Burden Interview (ZBI). ZBI contains 22 items. Each item on the interview is a statement which the caregiver is asked to endorse using a 5-point scale. Response options range from 0 (Never) to 4 (Nearly Always). In general, higher score indicates higher levels of burden. The full summed score ranges from 0 to 88, with higher scores indicating higher levels of burden (Cronbach's α = .80).

    Measured: Month 3, Month 9

  2. Caregiver's Depression at Month 3 and Month 9

    Depressive symptoms were measured by the 10-item Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (Andresen et al., 1994). Caregivers reported their depressive symptoms in the past week on a 4-point scale (from 0 = rarely or none of the time to 3 = most or all of the time). The summed scores ranged from 0 to 30, and higher scores indicated higher levels of depressive symptoms (Cronbach's α = .86).

    Measured: Month 3, Month 9

  3. Caregiving Competency at Month 3 and Month 9

    Caregiving competency was measured by the Caregiving Competence Scale. It is a 4-point Likert (not at all, just a little, somewhat, very much) scale including four questions: How do you believe that you've learned to deal with very difficult situations? How much do you feel that all in all, you're a good caregiver? How competent do you feel? How self-confident do you feel? We summed the scores of four items with higher scores indicating larger competence (Cronbach's alpha=0.62). The range of the score is 0-16.

    Measured: Month 3, Month 9

  4. Loneliness at Month 3 and Month 9

    Loneliness was assessed by the Revised-University of California at Los Angeles Loneliness Scale. Caregivers rated their feelings of lacking companionship, left out of life, and isolation from others respectively on a 3-point scale (hardly ever, sometimes, often). We added up scores for the three questions to produce a continuous variable ranging from 0 to 6, with higher scores indicating higher levels of loneliness (Cronbach's alpha = 0.80).

    Measured: Month 3, Month 9

Timeline

From the start of the study to its completion; the mark is today. Estimated dates are the sponsor’s plan.

  1. First posted15 Apr 2020
  2. Study start1 Jul 2019
  3. Primary completion31 Mar 2022
  4. Study completion31 Mar 2022

Resources

More details

For doctors and researchers: how the study is designed, who runs it, and its registry IDs.

Study design
Study type
Interventional
Phase
Phase N/A
Primary purpose
Supportive care
Allocation
Randomised
Intervention model
Parallel groups
Model description
randomized controlled trial
Masking
None (open label)
Enrolment
38 participants (actual)
IDs, dates and publications
ClinicalTrials.gov ID
NCT04346745
Sponsor's protocol ID
AAAS3969
Status last verified
Aug 2024
First submitted
8 Apr 2020
Last updated
19 Sep 2024
Data monitoring committee
No
FDA-regulated drug
No
FDA-regulated device
No
Individual data sharing
No

Publications

  • Liu J, Cheung ESL, Lou Y, Wu B. A peer mentoring program for Chinese American dementia caregivers: a pilot randomized controlled trial. Aging Ment Health. 2024 Nov;28(11):1479-1488. doi: 10.1080/13607863.2024.2346599. Epub 2024 May 2.

    PubMed 38695396

Questions about this trial

What is this clinical trial studying?

A study testing Peer Mentoring Program in people with Caregiver Burnout, run by Columbia University at 1 site in United States.

The full registered description is in the About this study section and the official record.

Who may be eligible to take part?

The sponsor lists 17 inclusion and 2 exclusion criteria. Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening, so read the full criteria and contact a listed site.

Is this clinical trial currently recruiting?

The record says: finished, as of the sponsor's last update on 19 Sep 2024. Status can change between updates, so confirm with the study contact before making plans.

Where is the study taking place?

The record lists 1 site in United States. Whether a site is taking part right now should be confirmed with that site. See every site.

What are the possible benefits and risks?

They depend on the study and the treatment, and no study can promise a benefit. The study team explains the known risks during informed consent, before anyone joins; the record itself does not list them.

Are results available for this study?

Yes. Results are posted in the registry (first posted 19 Sep 2024). A summary is in the For doctors view, and the full results are on ClinicalTrials.gov.

How can a doctor refer a patient or contact the research team?

The record lists no contact. The official record names the sponsor, who can be asked directly. AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals.

What does the primary outcome measure?

Caregiver Burden Score at Month 3 and Month 9 (time frame: Month 3, Month 9). The study lists 4 primary outcomes in all. It is what the study was designed to measure, not a finding.

Where can I read the original study information?

On the ClinicalTrials.gov record for NCT04346745, which also lists 1 linked publication.

Does a listing mean the treatment is approved or proven to work?

No. A listing means the study is registered. It does not show that the treatment is safe, works, or is approved by a regulator.

How often is this information updated?

AzTrials copies changed records from ClinicalTrials.gov every night and reloads the whole registry every week. The sponsor last updated this record on 19 Sep 2024.

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