Choosing an Effective Healthcare Spokesperson: An Interactive Intervention

Project Narrative Because the number of older Americans is growing, and it is widely known that surrogate decision-makers often do not accurately represent the wishes and goals of their loved ones, effective interventions are needed to help individuals choose the right people to serve as their medical spokesperson. The R21 application, Choosing an Effective Healthcare Spokesperson: Establishing the Feasibility of a Serious Game, is intended to deepen our understanding of how people choose a spokesperson for health care decisions, and to move us closer towards a readily scalable intervention for helping people optimize that choice. This project will use qualitative and quantitative methods to 1) examine how playing the novel serious game, Who Would You Choose: Serious Fun, affects people's choice of a spokesperson, and 2) assess its feasibility as an intervention that can be compared with standard practices.