Janice Krieger, University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications STEM Translational Communication Center director, and a team of researchers has been awarded a National Institute on Aging (NIA) grant to use the virtual health assistant ALEX (Agent Leveraging Empathy for eXams) to recruit older adult minorities for clinical trials.

The grant project, totaling $2.1 million over a three-year period, will focus on underserved populations at a high risk for developing chronic diseases and health conditions. These populations are significantly underrepresented in clinical research. Tailoring content and source preferences to be patient-centered and culturally and personally relevant to the patients is expected to have a lasting and positive effect on their health attitudes and behaviors.

The long-term goal is to increase clinical trial participation among older adult minorities (Black/African American, Hispanic/Latinx, and/or rural adults over the age of 50) using virtual human technology. The project has three aims: conducting focus groups with older adult minorities to obtain data that will be used to redesign ALEX to be culturally sensitive for these minorities; to track engagement of such minorities into active, NIH-funded clinical trials for remotely delivering ALEX; and, to compare ALEX and standard recruitment methods for enrolling such minorities into NIH-funded clinical trials.

In 2017, Krieger received a $3.04 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to test the efficacy of using virtual human technology to increase colorectal cancer screening among rural and minority patients.

Posted: September 22, 2021
Category: News, STEM Translational Communication Center