Community-Academic Partnership

Abstract

Despite research findings that rural Appalachians prefer to die at home, few people access palliative and hospice care services, and many report limited knowledge about palliative/end-of-life care resources. A community-academic partnership was formed to address this need. Train-the-trainer workshop and materials were co-developed. This study tested the feasibility and cultural acceptability of the training intervention to increase community members' knowledge about palliative/end-of-life care resources for East Tennessee Appalachian people. Community-based participatory research design and culture care theory guided the project, intervention, and research. After engaging in end-of-life training, participants completed a retrospective pretest-posttest survey. Paired samples t tests were used to compare knowledge before and after training. Means and standard deviations were used to report training material usefulness and cultural acceptability. Short-answer qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis. Sixty-six adults completed the survey. Ratings for training materials and cultural/theological acceptability were high. Participant knowledge rankings showed significant improvement after training at the P <.001 level. Qualitative feedback was positive. The training intervention was feasible, culturally acceptable, and effective for increasing East Tennessee Appalachian persons' palliative/end-of-life care knowledge. Community member expertise/collaboration integrated into every stage of the project is the bedrock of cultural acceptability and feasibility.

Spiritual Well-Being in Appalachian Family Caregivers

“…Hebert and colleagues (2009) recommended that to better prepare family caregivers for palliative care, nurses must provide them with specific information tailored to their home care needs and continue communication for caregivers to seek and process the information. Also, integrating spiritual wellbeing support is a culturally appropriate intervention to help these patients and family caregivers in rural Appalachia manage health challenges (Mixer et al, 2023;Smothers et al, 2023).…”

“…However, it has been established that older adults, rural dwellers, Appalachian families, and those providing palliative care value faith and church memberships (Mixer et al, 2023). Notably, many philosophers, social-psychologists, and religious leaders write about spiritual well-being based on prayer or positive thoughts.…”