Bonnie Stein Kammer went to Chicago for Passover in 2012 and never left. Emergency heart surgery turned her from a holiday houseguest into a permanent resident; she decided she would receive better ongoing care while living with her daughter, a physician, than if she returned to her home in Wisconsin.
Researchers Seek Sage Advice Of Elders On Aging Issues
Read a Kaiser Health News profile of the Bureau of Sages. (Image: KHN)
But with her heart problem and difficulty walking, Stein Kammer found herself mainly confined to her new home. She quickly found online classes to occupy her time. During one course, she learned about an opportunity to become a partner on a PCORI-funded project that connected older adults with researchers to advise on studies.
The project, with support from a Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Award, has built an advisory bureau of residents in skilled nursing facilities and older adults who live at home.
Too often, these groups are left out of discussions about the very research that aims to meet their needs. The project team wanted to bring those older adult voices into comparative effectiveness research to help shape study protocols and outcomes, ultimately improving older adults’ care.
“When I spoke with the medical researchers who came to talk with our group, it amazed me that it was a new experience for them to listen to seniors,” Stein Kammer says. “In the PCORI project, seniors are being asked what we think, and we are being heard.”
Stein Kammer is no stranger to working to change the status quo. Now 85, she was one of only two women in her law school class at the University of Wisconsin in the early 1950s. She raised five children and became a real estate attorney at a time when few women had professional careers.
Growing but Underrepresented
About one in every seven Americans is 65 or older, and this group is growing quickly. By 2060, the Department of Health and Human Services estimates there will be 98 million older adults, nearly double today’s figure. But few participate in health research.
Many studies exclude people who are homebound or live in nursing facilities. Other studies won’t allow people over a certain age—often 65—to participate, says PCORI project lead Amy Eisenstein, MA, PhD. Even studies that focus on older adults often leave out people who take multiple medications or have more than one chronic condition, as much of the older adult population does. As a result, these studies don’t accurately reflect the older adult population and are unlikely to produce findings that help the very people they intend to serve, she says.
When Eisenstein became Director for Research at CJE SeniorLife in Chicago, in 2015, residents at its skilled nursing residential community told her they saw a need for research in nursing homes. The conversations sparked the idea for forming a research advisory board, which became known as the Bureau of Sages.
Bureau participants either live at the residential community, the Lieberman Center for Health and Rehabilitation, or are members of a virtual senior center, which provides web-based classes, social opportunities, and other events for stay-at-home older adults. Stein Kammer participates in a program of this kind.
The Engagement Award’s first year educated and trained the project’s bureau members. Participants learned about basic research concepts, patient-centered outcomes research, comparative effectiveness research, and ways to meaningfully contribute to research.
Advising Researchers
In year two of the project, the bureau engaged 17 researchers and provided them with recommendations on prioritizing research topics, improving interview questions, and accommodating seniors’ needs.
Rush University’s Laurin Mack, PhD, and a colleague, Sylvie Rosenkalt, BA, from Howard Brown Health, in Chicago, presented one such proposal to the bureau. The two plan to study a health ambassador program, which is part of a larger program that educates providers, patients, and their families about geriatric health.
Mack and Rosenkalt told the bureau about a yearlong educational program for older adults and family members, involving in-person meetings at health centers. Participants would also complete online educational modules.
Mack, Rosenkalt, and their colleagues wanted to study whether the program would increase participants’ knowledge about aging and affect health outcomes. After hearing from the bureau’s older adults, the team changed the way they thought about program delivery.
Bonnie Stein Kammer (on screen), a member of the Bureau of Sages, meets via videoconference with policy consultant Phyllis Mitzen (left), of the Health and Medicine Policy Research Group, and CJE SeniorLife staff member Nissa Romanowski. (Courtesy of Amy Eisenstein)
Bureau members said a year was too long for older adults to maintain attendance. They also told the researchers that commuting to meetings outside of their community would make participation difficult. “It was so helpful to talk with people who would be our program’s consumers,” Mack says.
The input “gave us confidence in our ideas, constructive feedback, and direction on how to improve the ideas that weren't as well suited to older adults," she says. The researchers shortened the program to two in-person sessions and considered program sites that might be more convenient to participants, such as assisted living facilities and long-term care communities.
Building More Bureaus
Eisenstein and her team plan to build on their success by organizing additional advisory groups using a second PCORI Engagement Award. The team is talking about creating research advisory groups with staff from around 10 long-term care facilities and other settings. The team is also working with the Gerontological Society of America to form an interest group of researchers who want to integrate older adult patients’ feedback into research. The interest group will work toward implementing bureaus in diverse settings.
The Bureau of Sages is a great example of real people—older adults who may be very frail, have limited mobility, or have some level of cognitive impairment—having the opportunity to participate and help shape research.
Robyn Stone, DrPH Senior Vice President for Research at LeadingAge
Robyn Stone, DrPH, Senior Vice President for Research at LeadingAge, a national association of aging services providers, who has participated in both PCORI-funded projects, strongly supports making advisory bureaus of older adults sustainable.
“The Bureau of Sages is a great example of real people—older adults who may be very frail, have limited mobility, or have some level of cognitive impairment—having the opportunity to participate and help shape research,” she says.
Stone and colleagues from the University of Massachusetts Boston are now working to share the voice of nursing home residents with researchers across the country as part of the second, broader PCORI Engagement Award. “The Bureau of Sages concept has the potential to transform both the research questions we ask and the process itself,” she says.
Eisenstein agrees that the bureau in Chicago is just the beginning. The idea, she says, has the potential to make research much more relevant for older adults and make a difference in the lives of older people nationwide.
By Melissa Schenkman, Writer and Editor
Posted: September 4, 2018
