Center for Research and Education on Aging and Technology Enhancement - CREATE

Project Summary/Abstract About two million homebound (HB) older adults live in the community in the US, which is almost 1.5 times the total of older adults in nursing homes. HB older adults are a diverse population, with complex medical and social needs, and experience high levels of chronic conditions. Minoritized populations are disproportionally

affected by HB status and multiple chronic conditions (MCC). In addition to the lack of financial resources, transportation, and physical limitations, multiple stressors associated with managing MCC pose significant barriers to maintaining social contacts and activities. However, the wide range of interventions involving older

adults who are HB and living with MCC have not addressed social engagement in this population. Social engagement is a critical indicator of well-being and health, and provides individuals living with MCC a sense of purpose, control, and self-efficacy in coping with MCC. Still, minority groups are highly underrepresented in

most interventions, and knowledge about HB older minority with MCC’s challenges with social engagement and the implementation and evaluation of technology-based social engagement interventions in this target population are not known. The proposed 2-year project will address these significant gaps.

Using an asset-based approach, our aims are: 1) Ascertain social engagement needs and challenges, and preferences regarding technology-delivered interventions among HB minority older adults with MCC, and elicit case managers’ perspectives on social engagement challenges of HB aging adults; 2) Conduct usability testing

with HB minority older adults with MCC of a Virtual Reality intervention designed to facilitate social engagement. The Virtual Reality intervention will be adapted based on the findings in Aim1; 3) Conduct an uncontrolled pilot study to evaluate, using standard metrics, the acceptability and feasibility, and further data on

usability of the social Virtual Reality intervention in a sample of older minority HB adults with MCC in home settings. We will use a qualitative approach in Aim 1 to better understand the perceived benefits and drawbacks of social engagement in HB minority older adults, a mixed methods approach to test the usability of the adapted

intervention in Aim 2, and a pre-post design to gauge the feasibility and acceptability of this intervention in Aim 3. Our interdisciplinary team is uniquely qualified and has an optimal range of backgrounds, expertise, and experience to conduct this study. Findings from this project will generate evidence on technology-delivered

social interventions as means to facilitate social engagement in the target population, to help mitigate loneliness and social isolation, and inform future design guidelines.