Rachel Kohn Receives Grant from the University Research Foundation

Congratulations to Dr. Rachel Kohn for receiving funding from University Research Foundation (URF) Grants Program!

The University Research Foundation (URF) is an internal funding program that supports the research mission of the university. While the details of structure and funding have evolved over its 37-year existence, the goals have remained the same: to support faculty as they start their careers; to help established faculty pivot into new research directions; to compete for external funding; and, to facilitate collaborations across disciplines.

Dr. Kohn received this award for her project, “Evaluating the Construct of Dignity in Acute Respiratory Failure Survivorship.”

PROJECT SUMMARY: Post-intensive care syndrome (PICS), debilitating physical, psychological, and cognitive impairments persisting for months to years following critical illness recovery, affects >50% of acute respiratory failure (ARF) survivors, and has overlapping sources of distress as other serious illnesses. Among these populations, there is growing evidence that dignity-centered care – focused not only on patients’ illnesses but holistically on physical, functional, psychosocial, existential, and spiritual well-being, facilitating patients’ feeling valued and understood as individuals – is associated with improvements in anxiety, depression, and distress. However, there are critical knowledge gaps of whether dignity-centered care could prevent or treat PICS, improving ARF survivorship. Therefore, this project will build on prior work to elucidate the role of dignity as a novel, patient-centered, potentially modifiable domain of PICS, by (1) defining trajectories of patient dignity among ARF survivors in the first 6 months after hospitalization, and (2) identifying factors underlying poor dignity trajectories and outcomes among ARF survivors using mixed methods. This will provide preliminary data to inform an R01 proposal supporting a large, multicenter prospective cohort of ARF survivors to develop (1) a predictive model identifying patients most likely to benefit from dignity-centered care, and (2) dignity-centered care interventions, thus improving ARF survivorship.