Projects
To learn more about our projects, email mcgradylab@cchmc.org.
Testing Personalized Solutions to Help Make Medication Adherence Easier
For many adolescents and young adults with cancer, treatment includes complex health behaviors like taking multiple medications at different dosing schedules. Following this treatment regimen can be difficult and our goal is to make it easier for adolescents and young adults with cancer to take their medication as prescribed.
To do this, our teams at Cincinnati Children’s, Seattle Children’s, Akron Children’s, and Levine Children’s partnered with patients to create the first tailored adherence-promotion intervention for adolescents and young adults with cancer. This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and you can read more about the program our patients helped us create here!
Then, we partnered with Seattle Children’s and St. Jude to conduct a pilot trial of our tailored adherence-promotion intervention. A pilot trial is like a “test run” of a research study where we check if people will join the study, stay involved in the study, and complete all of the study tasks. We found that the study was feasible and acceptable and that all AYAs felt like the intervention helped them increase their adherence. This study was funded by the NIH and you can read more about what we found here!
Now, we are excited to test whether our intervention can make it easier for adolescents and young adults with cancer to take their medication, and in turn, improve their quality of life. To do this, we are conducting a randomized controlled trial and recruiting patients from Cincinnati Children’s, Columbia University, Seattle Children’s, and University of Kansas Medical Center. This study is being funded by the NIH – be sure to check back in the future for updates on what we learn!
Improving the Rigor of Medication Adherence Assessment
Medication non-adherence, or taking a medication in a way that does not align with the agreed-upon treatment plan, can lead to poor health outcomes for patients and impact the results of clinical trials. As a result, it is important to have tools that can help us accurately measure medication adherence. One way to measure medication adherence is by using electronic pill bottles or boxes. These pill bottles and boxes have computer chips inside. The computer chips record the time and date each time the bottle or box is opened. Because there are lots of electronic pill bottle and boxes that researchers and clinicians can choose from, we wanted to independently evaluate the accuracy of commercially-available electronic adherence monitoring devices. We tested devices according to a protocol reflecting four adherence behaviors. We hope that our findings can help clinicians and researchers select an electronic pill bottle or box that is accurate and aligns with their needs.
Even though electronic pill boxes and bottles can help us figure out a patient’s adherence, right now, this process is complicated and mostly completed by hand. With the support of the NIH, we created an algorithm that converts the data from electronic pill boxes and bottles into adherence data. Researchers interested in using this tool can access it via our GitHub site - https://github.com/oncmap – please just be sure to cite our corresponding manuscript!
