Empower Elderly Chinese Americans: Advance Care Planning Educational Workshop

Advance care planning (ACP) is important to ensure values and preferences are followed at an individual’s end-of-life. However, elderly Chinese Americans have a much lower advance directive (AD) completion rate than the national average level. This quality improvement project aimed to improve ACP engagement and AD completion rates among elderly Chinese Americans at a local senior center in Arizona. It was a quasi-experimental longitudinal design study guided by the theory of planned behavior and the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle framework. Participants were recruited using newsletters and in-person events, targeting Chinese Americans aged 55 and older. Three monthly culturally tailored educational workshops were conducted from September to December 2024 after receiving IRB approval from Arizona State University and the project site. A pre-, post-, and 1-month follow-up 9-item ACP Engagement Survey was collected to measure attitudes and readiness to complete AD. This survey is a validated and reliable tool with high Cronbach's alpha values ranging from 0.84 to 0.97. Data analysis using Intellectus Statistics software showed a significant increase in ACP engagement scores over time (p < .001). Additionally, AD completion rates rose by 220% after the intervention. These findings indicated that culturally tailored educational workshops could effectively improve ACP engagement and AD completion rates in elderly Chinese Americans. This project provided valuable insights for ACP in culturally diverse communities, and further study can explore the long-term impact on population health outcomes.