Adelphi University College of Nursing and Public Health
Prioritizing end-of-life communication to reduce disparities among PLWD in Home Healthcare (HHC)
Dr. Osakwe is a nurse practitioner and assistant professor in the College of Nursing and Public Health at Adelphi University. Dr. Osakwe has an extensive background as a home healthcare nurse, and as the director of both a long-term home healthcare organization and a certified home healthcare program. Her research focuses on improving the quality of care delivered in the home healthcare setting, particularly for people living with dementia (PLWD). Her goal is to improve care planning in home healthcare to support earlier transitions to hospice and palliative care for PLWD nearing the end-of-life. Her current research is examining national trends in the delivery of home-based medical care provided by NPs. Her qualitative work describes the perspectives of Spanish-speaking home health aides with limited English proficiency, to inform the development of dementia-specific care plans.
Visiting Nurse Association Health Group (VNAHG) is the largest independent, nonprofit provider of Home Healthcare (HHC) and Hospice in New Jersey. VNAHG has a strong commitment to advance health equity in the community it serves.
As a HCS Scholar, Dr. Osakwe will explore interventions culturally tailored to the values and beliefs of Black and Hispanic PLWD in HHC settings at the end of life (EOL). Dr. Osakwe will lead a team of interdisciplinary experts in nursing informatics, home healthcare practice and research, stakeholder engagement, and dementia care at VNAHG to establish a community advisory board. Guided by key principles of community-based participatory research, they will achieve the following Partnering Goals: 1) Use key stakeholder interviews to explore how HHC nurses develop care plans related to EOL care; 2) Assess HHC nurse, and Black and Hispanic PLWD/caregiver preferences in EOL communication; 3) Identify barriers and facilitators to using the Functional Assessment Staging (FAST) Scale in HHC, and optimal workflow for incorporating FAST Scale to screen for hospice in HHC; and 4) Plan for an embedded nurse led EOL assessment trial through building electronic health record capacity.