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CompletedNCT01670461FACEUpdated Mar 8, 2019

FAmily CEntered (FACE) Advance Care Planning for Teens With Cancer

An interventional study of FACE and Standard of Care (SOC) Control in Cancer, sponsored by Maureen Lyon. Completed at 1 site in United States. Open to participants aged 14 Years to 90 Years, including healthy volunteers. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2019-03-08.

Sponsored by Maureen Lyon · Not applicable, Interventional, and Supportive care

Phase
Not applicable
Study type
Interventional
Enrollment
60
Allocation
Randomized
Ages
14 Years to 90 Years
Sex
All
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Study summary

Advance Care Planning (ACP) prepares patients and their loved ones for future health care decisions, including end-of-life decisions. Yet, the needs of adolescent oncology patients for participation in ACP, despite its priority, is not well studied. Our goal is to test a model of ACP that anticipates these issues, fully empowers the family and adolescent, and keeps the key role of health care professionals central, building on our earlier work. We hypothesized FAmily CEntered (FACE) ACP, would: (1) increase congruence in treatment preferences between adolescents and surrogates; (2) decrease decisional conflict for adolescents; and (3) increase quality of communication compared with controls.

Read the detailed description

Condition The purpose of the FACE intervention is to facilitate conversations about EOL care between adolescents and their legal guardians or surrogates in order to increase congruence in treatment preferences, to decrease decisional conflict, while supporting plans and actions, psychological adjustment and quality of life. This intervention will consist of three 60 to 90-minute sessions in a dyadic format with a trained/certified interviewer. Each session will be followed by a 15 minute assessment, using process measures to assess participants' ratings of the quality of the communication with the facilitator and satisfaction (negative and positive emotions in response to session) on a Likert scale. A research assistant, not the facilitator, will conduct the immediate post evaluation sessions. A Standard of Care comparison condition will also be assessed and measures administered at the same time intervals: at baseline, one week intervals for three weeks for process measures and Statement of Treatment Preferences, and at 3 month-post intervention follow-up.

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Conditions studied

  • Cancer

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Keywords

  • advance care planning, palliative care, pediatric
03

In context

Neoplasms

9,616 studies on the registry are indexed under Neoplasms; 2,508 are open to participants now.

This study's enrollment of 60 is above the median of 50 across 7,429 interventional studies indexed under Neoplasms.

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Lead sponsor

Maureen Lyon is the lead sponsor of 5 studies on the registry; none are open to participants now.

Counted across the registry records on this site, refreshed daily.

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Who can participate

Ages eligible
14 Years to 90 Years
Sexes eligible
All
Accepts healthy volunteers
Yes

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Inclusion criteria

  • Age ≥14.0 years and \<21.0 years for adolescents at enrollment;
  • Age ≥ 21.0 years for surrogates at enrollment;
  • IQ > 70 or not known to be developmentally delayed;
  • Depression score on Beck Depression Inventory, Second Edition (BDI-II) Total Score \< 26;
  • Primary language English

Exclusion criteria

Exclusion Criteria:

  • In foster care;
  • Developmentally delayed;
  • Suicidal or homicidal or psychotic at time of screening;
  • Not understand or speak English; and
  • Failure on mini mental status exam
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Study design

Phase
Not applicable
Primary purpose
Supportive care
Allocation
Randomized
Intervention model
Single group
Masking
None (open label)
Enrollment
60 participants (actual)

Study arms

  • Experimental
    FACE Advance Care Planning

    FACE intervention goal is to facilitate conversations about EOL care between adolescents and their legal guardians/surrogates to increase congruence in treatment preferences, to decrease decisional conflict, while supporting plans and actions, psychological adjustment and quality of life. Three 60 to 90-minute sessions in a dyadic format with a trained/certified interviewer. Session 1. The Lyon Family Centered Advance Care Planning Survey©. Session 2. Respecting Choices® Family-Centered Cancer Specific ACP Interview. Session 3. Completion of Five Wishes©.

    Behavioral: FACE

  • Other
    Standard of Care (SOC) Control

    Standard of Care Control: Advance Directive Information Booklet plus Advance Directive Checklist.

    Behavioral: Standard of Care (SOC) Control

Interventions

  • BehavioralFACE

    FACE intervention goal is to facilitate conversations about EOL care between adolescents and their legal guardians/surrogates to increase congruence in treatment preferences, to decrease decisional conflict, while supporting plans and actions, psychological adjustment and quality of life. Three 60 to 90-minute sessions in a dyadic format with a trained/certified interviewer. Session 1. The Lyon Family Centered Advance Care Planning Survey©. Session 2. Respecting Choices® Family-Centered Cancer Specific ACP Interview. Session 3. Completion of Five Wishes©.

    Also known as: FAmily CEntered (FACE) Advance Care Planning

  • BehavioralStandard of Care (SOC) Control

    Standard of Care (SOC) control will be provided with written information that encourages conversation the treatment team. At Children's National the following represent hospital policy: " … regarding advance directives … to honor each non-minor patient's wishes … to encourage and assist patients in determining and expressing their preferences regarding treatment decisions for use in the event they subsequently become unable to make such decisions." Upon admission if they do not have an advance directive, they should be given the "Advance Directive Information Booklet" and the Advance Directive Checklist. If they already have one, the patient is asked to provide a current copy, and it is placed in the medical record.

    Also known as: Standard of Care Control plus Information

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What researchers measure

Primary outcomes

  1. Statement of Treatment Preferences

    Statement of Treatment Preferences expresses values and goals related to future decision making regarding frequently occurring scenarios common to individuals dying of cancer). This instrument will be used to document specific treatment preferences of patients and the surrogate's understanding of what the patient would want. Patients and surrogates choose one of three options, "to continue all treatment and keep fighting," "to stop all treatment to prolong my life," and "don't know." It can also be used to monitor changes in patient's preferences over time. This tool has been used in adults and in adolescents in the FACE study conducted by the PI.

    Time frame: Week 3

Secondary outcomes

  1. Quality of Patient-Interviewer Communication

    Quality of Patient-Interviewer Communication is a questionnaire to be administered independently to patient and parent/surrogate following Sessions 1, 2 and 3, regardless of randomization. This tool will be used to evaluate the quality of communication that occurs between the patient/guardian/surrogate and the HCP/interviewer. This instrument consists of four items to determine the quality of patient-clinician communication. Items are rated on a 3-point scale with degree from "no" to "definitely yes," meaning that the higher scores indicate the higher satisfaction with the quality of communication. Good internal consistencies have been reported in patients with AIDS (Cronbach's α = .81.

    Time frame: Week 2, 3 and 4

  2. Decisional Conflict Scale

    Decisional Conflict Scale is used to measure the degree of uncertainty about the course of action to take. The DSC consists of three subscales on a five-point Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), e.g., "This decision was hard for me to make." The DSC demonstrated good test-retest item reliabilities (r≥.80).

    Time frame: Week 3

Other outcomes

  1. Beck Depression Inventory-II

    Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II)is a 21-item scale self-report measure to assess presence of symptoms of depression and severity of symptoms reported. This instrument has shown a high content, construct, and factorial validity and is appropriate for children and adolescents \> 13 years of age. Reliability and validity are good.

    Time frame: Week 1 and Month 4 (plus or minus one month)

  2. Beck Anxiety Index (BAI).

    Beck Anxiety Index (BAI). This is a 21-item measure assessing severity of subjective, somatic, and panic-related symptoms of anxiety. Participants rate the degree of discomfort experienced as a result of each symptom over the past week on a 4-point Likert scale (range 0-3). Items are summed with a maximum possible score of 63. Scores of 0 to 7 indicate minimal anxiety, 8-15 indicate mild anxiety, 16-25 indicated moderate anxiety, and \>26 indicate severe anxiety. Test-retest reliability for this measure is acceptable (r = .75) as is internal consistency reliability (α = .92). The BAI has also demonstrated adequate content, concurrent, construct, discriminant, and factorial validity. This measure was validated to clinically assess severity of anxiety in individuals aged 17 to 80, however will be extended to the younger age range of this study to allow for consistency of data collected by a single measure of anxiety.

    Time frame: Week 1 and Month 4 (plus or minus one month)

  3. Five Wishes©

    Five Wishes© (Towey, Aging with Dignity Component developed with support from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) is a legal document that facilitates having people express their treatment preferences if they were seriously ill or unable to communicate their wishes. The adolescent completed this along with their parent/proxy during the third experimental session. For adolescents under age 18, the Five Wishes© must be signed by their parent or legal guardian to be legally sufficient.

    Time frame: Week 4

  4. Threat Appraisal Scale (TAS).

    Threat Appraisal Scale (TAS)is a questionnaire administered to the adolescent during baseline assessment only. This measure will retrospectively estimate the adolescent's threat appraisal of cancer when adolescent learned of cancer diagnosis. Test-retest reliability for this measure ranges from .68 in younger children to .93 in older children. TAS scores are found to demonstrate a high degree of agreement with children's open-ended descriptions of negative life events, indicating adequate convergent validity of this measure. Theoretically, threat appraisal is related to Lazarus' concept of primary appraisal, particularly to the way in which the event threatens the child's commitments, goals, or values. Higher threat appraisals should lead to negative arousal and coping and to increased psychological symptoms.

    Time frame: Week 3

  5. Spiritual Well Being Scale of the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy - Version 4 (FACIT-Sp).

    Spiritual Well Being Scale of the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy - Version 4 (FACIT-Sp)is a questionnaire administered individually to both adolescent and guardian/surrogate. This measure will investigate spirituality as a protective process. This 23 item scale focuses primarily on the existential aspects of spirituality and faith. There are two subscales: meaning/peace and faith. The FACIT-SP has been used to study spirituality in teens with chronic illnesses.

    Time frame: Week 1 and Month 4 (plus or minus one month)

  6. The Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory™ 4.0 (PedQL™ 4.0)

    The Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory™ 4.0 (PedQL™ 4.0). Adolescent and parent/surrogate will complete independently the age-appropriate self-report version and the parent proxy report version. This is a 23-item modular instrument designed to measure health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in children and adolescents. It measures four dimensions of functional quality of life (Core Scales: Physical, Emotional, Social, School) applicable to pediatric populations with acute and chronic health conditions. This measure was selected, because it has the strongest norms, validity, and reliability of the measures available.

    Time frame: Week 1 and Month 4 (plus or minus one month)

  7. Satisfaction Questionnaire

    The Satisfaction Questionnaire assesses negative and postive emotional reactions to participating in the study on the part of the adolescent and the surrogate decision-maker/family member. It was designed specifcally for this study based on community based participatory research.

    Time frame: AWeek 2, 3 and 4

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Study locations

1 site
  • Children's National Medical Center
    Washington D.C., District of Columbia 20010-2970, United States
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References and documents

Publications

  • Lyon ME, Jacobs S, Briggs L, Cheng YI, Wang J. Family-centered advance care planning for teens with cancer. JAMA Pediatr. 2013 May;167(5):460-7. doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.943. PubMed 23479062 ↗
  • Jacobs S, Perez J, Cheng YI, Sill A, Wang J, Lyon ME. Adolescent end of life preferences and congruence with their parents' preferences: results of a survey of adolescents with cancer. Pediatr Blood Cancer. 2015 Apr;62(4):710-4. doi: 10.1002/pbc.25358. Epub 2014 Dec 24. PubMed 25545105 ↗
  • Lyon ME, Jacobs S, Briggs L, Cheng YI, Wang J. A longitudinal, randomized, controlled trial of advance care planning for teens with cancer: anxiety, depression, quality of life, advance directives, spirituality. J Adolesc Health. 2014 Jun;54(6):710-7. doi: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2013.10.206. Epub 2014 Jan 7. PubMed 24411819 ↗
  • Watson A, Weaver M, Jacobs S, Lyon ME. Interdisciplinary Communication: Documentation of Advance Care Planning and End-of-Life Care in Adolescents and Young Adults With Cancer. J Hosp Palliat Nurs. 2019 Jun;21(3):215-222. doi: 10.1097/NJH.0000000000000512. PubMed 30829829 ↗
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Updates

Tracking since Sep 25, 2026
No changes since tracking began. The registry record was last updated on Mar 8, 2019, before this site started recording changes on Sep 25, 2026. Its history is on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗
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Registry details

Key details

Study ID
NCT01670461
Lead sponsor
Maureen Lyon
Collaborators
American Cancer Society, Inc.
Responsible party
Maureen Lyon (Associate Research Professor in Pediatrics, Children's National Research Institute) — Sponsor-investigator
First posted
Aug 22, 2012
Start date
Jan 2009
Primary completion
Jun 2013
Completion
Jun 2013
Last update
Mar 8, 2019

Study contacts

Maureen E Lyon, PhD
principal investigator · Children's Research Institute, Children's National Medical Center

Oversight

Data monitoring committee
No
View the source record on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗

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