# Longitudinal Patterns of Symptoms, Medication and Hospice Use in Nursing Home Residents Approaching End of Life

> **NIH NIH K24** · UNIV OF MASSACHUSETTS MED SCH WORCESTER · 2020 · $198,382

## Abstract

LONGITUDINAL PATTERNS OF SYMPTOMS, MEDICATION AND HOSPICE USE IN NURSING HOME
RESIDENTS APPROACHING END OF LIFE
The candidate’s long-term career objective is to make a sustained impact as a geriatric palliative care research
leader by mentoring promising, multidisciplinary investigators in aging research. The candidate’s professional
life has been dedicated to the conduct of patient-oriented research in geriatric pharmacoepidemiology for
nursing home and hospice patients, focusing specifically on the topic of deprescribing. Establishing the
evidence for the risks and benefits of prescribing and deprescribing decisions, and identifying which patients
will receive the greatest benefit from deprescribing based on a shift from curative to symptom-oriented care, is
challenging. Institutionalized frail older adults are a particularly vulnerable population because of their high
burden of polypharmacy, risk of medication-related adverse events, limited life expectancy, and lack of
randomized controlled trial data for medication efficacy. Training a multidisciplinary group of junior investigators
is key to building the deprescribing evidence base. Studies are needed that can ultimately inform the design of
tools that identify when nursing home residents are entering the final stages of their life and the development of
interventions to optimize medication use when that happens. Thus, the objectives of this K24 are: 1. To
enhance the candidate’s capacity to effectively mentor a multidisciplinary group of mentees in patient-oriented
research, and 2. To expand the candidate’s clinical research program in geriatric palliative care and
deprescribing in directions that create new and innovative opportunities for mentees, including qualitative
methods for mixed-methods studies. This will be accomplished by: i. recruitment of promising mentees from
varied disciplines committed to aging research, ii. individual mentorship of these trainees in their research
activities and career development, and iii. didactic sessions and formal coursework for mentees. The
candidate’s research brings together expertise in geriatrics and aging research, palliative medicine and
hospice care, and pharmacoepidemiology. The candidate’s research program about nursing home residents
and hospice enrollees grows out funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality, the American Cancer Society and the Donoghue Foundation. These studies have
contributed to the creation of rich data resources that will be used by mentees, including a nationwide dataset
of all nursing home residents from 2011-2016 that links the Minimum Data Set 3.0 to Medicare Part D data,
Certification and Survey Provider Enhanced Reporting data, Area Resource Files and Medicare Hospice
Utilization Public Use Files. Resources supporting training, development, and execution of the proposed
research include the University of Massachusetts Medical School’s (UMMS) Center for Clinical...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10039637
- **Project number:** 1K24AG068300-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIV OF MASSACHUSETTS MED SCH WORCESTER
- **Principal Investigator:** JENNIFER TJIA
- **Activity code:** K24 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $198,382
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-09-30 → 2025-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10039637

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10039637, Longitudinal Patterns of Symptoms, Medication and Hospice Use in Nursing Home Residents Approaching End of Life (1K24AG068300-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10039637. Licensed CC0.

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