Palliative Care in People Living With HIV/AIDS: Integrating Into Standard of Care

Our goal is to advance palliative care with persons living with AIDS (PLWA) or life-limiting co-morbidities aimed at relieving suffering and maximizing quality of life. One objective is to identify variables which influence decision-making with respect to advance care planning (ACP) for PLWA, as well as to determine the unique person-centered needs of subgroups of PLWA, as these are unknown. The negative consequences of no ACP or poor ACP include: unmet care or delivery of unnecessary or unwanted care, conflict erupting in the ICU, or the importance of non-relative caregivers being dismissed, for example gay partners. A second objective is to identify a "best approach" for standard of care in ACP, a key component of palliative care, as an end of life support. This approach may minimize health disparities in the likelihood of both identifying a surrogate decision-maker and using advance directives. We propose building on our evidence based, theoretical model, FAmily-CEntered (FACE) Advance Care Planning intervention, an HIV specific ACP program for Black teens which gained acceptance and demonstrated efficacy through increased congruence in treatment preferences and universal complete of advance directives with a surrogate decision-maker. Given the demonstrated needs and benefits of ACP and the low utilization among adult Black PLWA, we propose meeting this need by building on our FACE model with adults living with advanced AIDS and/or life-limiting co-morbidities in Washington, District of Columbia (DC) a city with endemic HIV and significant health disparities in death rates by race in an adequately-powered, randomized, clinical, 2-arm, single-blinded, controlled trial. We will test the efficacy of the FACE intervention for increasing congruence in end-of-life treatment preferences between PLWA and their surrogate decision-maker, to determine if increased congruence can be maintained over time. We will also determine if FACE is acceptable to primarily Black inner city adult PLWA. We will recruit from four hospital-based clinics and randomize 288 patient/surrogate dyads (N=576 subjects) in a 2:1 ratio to either FACE Intervention (N=192 dyads) or Control (N=96 dyads). Participants with HIV dementia, suicidality, homicidality or psychosis will be excluded. Two 60-minuted sessions will be conducted with a trained/certified facilitator at weekly intervals: FACE Session 1: The Respecting Choices Interview (R); Session 2: Completion of The Five Wishes (c). Control will also be administered in a dyadic format: Session 1: Developmental History; Session 2: Nutrition and Exercise. Standardized self-report measures will be administered at baseline, 3 month post-intervention 6 month post-intervention, 12 month post-intervention, and 18 month post-intervention. Thus, participants will be followed for an average of 2 years. This will be the first study to test an ACP model, integrating person-centered (GMM) and variable-centered analysis (GEE) to assess study outcomes.

Patient Inclusion Criteria:

• HIV positive outpatients or inpatients with detectable viral load (>200 copies) twice in the past 1 year period OR CD4 count <200 OR with a co-morbidity that may significantly limit life expectancy, including malignancy, cirrhosis, cardiomyopathy, etc.
• Patients with AIDS receiving dialysis, inpatients or outpatients
• Patients not in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU)
• Age 21 years or older
• All ethnic groups
• Male or female
• Knows his/her HIV status
• English speaking
• Absence of active psychosis or homicidal or suicidal ideation, determined at baseline screening by a trained research assistant as assessed by questions from a structured questionnaire
• Absence of HIV dementia, determined at screening using the HIV Dementia Scale cut off score of <10
• No evidence of developmental delay
• Consent from surrogate
• Consent from persons living with AIDS (PLWA) aged 21 or older

Surrogate Decision-maker inclusion criteria:

• Selected by patient
• Age 18 or older
• Willingness to discuss problems related to HIV and End Of Life (EOL)
• Absence of active psychosis, homicidal ideation, or suicidal ideation determined at baseline screening by trained RA
• Absence of HIV dementia, determined at screening using the HIV Dementia Scale cut off score of <10
• English speaking
• Consent to participate
• Knows HIV status of patient

Patient Exclusion Criteria:

• Patients in the ICU
• Age under 21 years old
• Patient unaware of HIV status
• Active psychosis or homicidal or suicidal ideation, determined at baseline screening by a trained research assistant as assessed by questions from a structured questionnaire
• Presence fo HIV Dementia at baseline
• Developmental delay
• Unable to find willing consented surrogate

Surrogate Decision-maker Exclusion Criteria:

• Surrogate under age of 18 years old
• Unwilling to discuss problems related to HIV and EOL
• Active psychosis or homicidal or suicidal ideation, determined at baseline screening by a trained research assistant as assessed by questions from a structured questionnaire
• Not an English speaker
• Unwilling to consent to participate and does not know HIV status of patient