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For information about Dr. Kenneth Minaker's clinical trials involving Growth Hormone Releasing Hormone (GHRH), click on the links:

Healthy Volunteers and Patients with Congestive Heart Failure

Research Grant Awards - 2006

Geriatric Education Center Grant. Awardees: Ken Minaker, MD and Shelley Amira, MPH

Chronic Care Educational Resource Training Project, Teaching Trainees how to Better Communicate with Older Adults Living with Chronic Disease

The primary goal of this project is to provide trainees with clear and effective tools that allow them to successfully discuss chronic illness, lifestyle changes and planning issues with patients over 65 and their families. The secondary goal is to bring the basic principles and philosophy of geriatric care into ambulatory primary care teaching. The training will take place in three primary care practices: Senior Health, Beacon Hill Primary Care and the Revere Adult Medicine practice.

The focus of the first teaching packet is Advanced Directives (AD). Under the direction of Dr. Monera Wong, MD trainees are first evaluated for their baseline knowledge of this subject. They are then taught the principles and importance of advanced directives, given talking points to facilitate the discussion with their patient, and, given educational packets for their patients to read and take home. 6 months later, the residents are interviewed again to determine the impact of the intervention on their knowledge and comfort level with the subject.

 

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: Awardee, Barbara Roberge, NP, Ph.D

The Nursing Ambulatory to Hospital Transitions Program (NAHT) - 2 year award.

The primary goal of The Nursing Ambulatory to Hospital Transitions Program (NAHT) is to determine whether communication of a preventive nursing care plan between ambulatory and hospital nurses will improve nursing care and reduce hospital complications. This study will identify those patients at risk of poor hospital outcomes, by tracking symptoms and complications throughout hospitalization and identifying how preventive nursing interventions improve care. Communication between ambulatory and hospital nurses during home-to-hospital transitions will focus on risk recognition and prevention of complications once hospitalized. This shared information, key to the care of patients, will occur within first 24 hours of hospitalization and thus, help the hospital nurse put into place a preventive care plan that will be tailored to the individual patient and focused on improving the patient’s hospital stay and avoiding injury.

The secondary objectives are two-fold. (1) To develop a pre-hospital patient risk index by identifying office based predictors of complications during hospitalization in vulnerable older adults. (2) To describe the hospital trajectory of patients within each risk index. Research on trajectories in the last year of life has demonstrated that frail elders have distinct declines in function that differ from those with organ failure, yet it is unknown if the nursing care of these groups differ. Specifically data will be collected about the nursing care requirements, the timing of and inter-relationship between symptoms and nurse interventions.

Symptom management is at the core of nursing yet we know little about the antecedents, interactions, and timing of symptoms and how nurses intervene to manage these complex phenomena over the course of a hospitalization. In summary the goal of this research study is to improve nursing communication in order to enhance the hospital experience for older adults.

Ongoing Research

The Geriatric Research Unit at MGH is largely involved in physiological research. Our research is mainly endocrine in nature with two major ongoing projects that are focused on glucose intolerance and muscle changes with aging.

Glucose intolerance, which increases in prevalence as a function of age, is being investigated with the aim of prevention or stopping its progression to disease. This is being pursued using insulinotropic agents, such as glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), and a potent analog, Exendin-4. The studies are being conducted at the MGH, as well as in collaboration with several colleagues at other institutions including Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, University of Virginia at Charlottesville, Yale University School of Medicine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the National Institute on Aging.

We are also exploring the possibility of reversing muscle loss with the use of growth hormone releasing hormone (GHRH). GHRH is a naturally occurring hormone that stimulates the production of growth hormone, which regulates the build up of many tissues in the body, including muscles and bones. This area is being investigated in elderly volunteers who have low IGF-1 levels and in volunteers with heart muscle weakness. Collaborators are those mentioned above as well as colleagues at Allegheny University Hospital and Tufts University Medical Center.