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Enhancing ICU teams emotional support for families of critically ill patients a randomized trial

Award Number: K23AG091847
ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON AGING
OPDIV: NIH
AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY
AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: TRAINING/TRAINEESHIP
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 07/01/2026
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 04/30/2031

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Enhancing ICU teams emotional support for families of critically ill patients a randomized trial - PROJECT ABSTRACT This K23 Career Development Award application is a Phase II preliminary efficacy trial of an intervention that seeks to enhance the frequency and quality of emotional support for families of adults with critical illness in three intensive care units (ICUs) at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Yearly, over 5 million US adults receive intensive care, including 1 in 3 older adults in their last month of life. Families of these patients often experience distressing emotions, which can negatively impact psychological health and their ability to make decisions for critically ill loved ones. Recognizing this, critical care guidelines recommend that ICU teams provide emotional support to families, not only medical information (prognosis, treatment options). Emotional support means responding to a person’s emotions with empathy, caring, and non-abandonment. Despite the importance of emotional support, families receive little from ICU clinicians. To enhance such emotional support and perspective taking, we developed the Emotional Support in ICU (ES- ICU) intervention. ES-ICU is unique because it utilizes the skills of hospital chaplains to transform the emotional support that ICU teams provide to families. In ES-ICU, hospital chaplains: (1) serve as ICU support counselors for families, meeting early and regularly over the ICU stay; and (2) catalyze ICU clinician provision of emotional support by creating standardized reports that are relayed to ICU clinicians. Reports prompt ICU clinicians to take the family’s perspective on the ICU experience and provide clinicians with tailored coaching. In Aim 1, we explore how families’ needs and clinical cultures around emotional support vary across three different ICU contexts and tailor ES-ICU to new contexts. In Aim 2, conduct a randomized trial to test whether families who receive ES-ICU report that ICU teams better meet their emotional support needs during the ICU experience, relative to usual care. In Aim 3, we assess implementation of ES-ICU in each ICU context, and examine how patient, family, contextual, and implementation factors influenced ES-ICU’s efficacy. Achieving these aims will prepare for a future R01-funded Phase III efficacy trial and establish the foundation for my career as an independent investigator and national expert focused on improving the psychological wellbeing of adults with critical illness and their families. To support the K23 research program and my long- term career goals, I will achieve training aims related to pragmatic behavioral clinical trial design and analysis, implementation science and mixed methods research, the science of psychological wellbeing, and leading academic research teams. Experienced mentors will guide me in these training aims and the rich research environments at Cedars-Sinai and the UCLA CTSI will facilitate research and training activities.


Issue Date FY	Funding FY	Legal Entity Name	Legal Entity Address	Legal Entity City	Legal Entity State	Legal Entity Zip Code	Legal Entity COUNTY	Legal Entity COUNTRY	Assistance Listing	Award Code	Budget Year	Action Date	Action Type	Action Amount

Issue Date FY: 2026 ( Subtotal = $191,700 )
2026	2026	CEDARS-SINAI MEDICAL CENTER	8700 BEVERLY BLVD	WEST HOLLYWOOD	CA	90048	LOS ANGELES	USA	Aging Research	000	1	6/30/2026	NEW	$191,700
														Subtotal = $191,700

Grand Total All Awards = $191,700

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Enhancing ICU teams emotional support for families of critically ill patients a randomized trial

Award Number: K23AG091847

ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON AGING

OPDIV: NIH

AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY

AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: TRAINING/TRAINEESHIP

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 07/01/2026

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 04/30/2031

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