Jia-Rong Wu

Biography

Wu is a professor and a member of the RICH Heart Research Program, a collaborative group of investigators with multiple NIH and PCORI funded projects. She has served as a project director and co-investigator on several multi-site and international studies. Wu is a cardiovascular nurse scientist with expertise in self-management intervention research, including medication adherence, symptom perception, insomnia/sleep disturbances, and self-care behaviors in adults with cardiovascular illnesses. She has extensive experience using, analyzing data from and interpreting, an objective measure of medication adherence, the Medication Event Monitoring System. She has experience conducting intervention studies in adults with heart failure and those with or at risk for cardiovascular disease throughout the life-course. Wu developed and tested a highly successful medication-taking behavior feedback intervention to improve medication adherence in elderly heart failure patients that not only improved and sustained adherence, but also decreased rehospitalizations and mortality. She has long history of working with patients with cardiovascular illnesses, and an excellent track record of publications, and collaboration with other research scientists. Her overall research program focused on promoting cardiovascular health by improving self-care behaviors in patients with cardiovascular disease. She has been a staff nurse, nurse manager, teacher, and researcher working in cardiovascular field for more than 30 years. She is a past recipient of the Post-doctoral Fellowship from the American Heart Association and K23 award from the NINR/NIH. In her K23 award, she tested a pilot study of the Family-focused, Literacy-sensitive (FamLit) intervention, which is an outgrowth of the earlier theory-based, MEMS-feedback intervention. She included a family member and used educational materials at an appropriate literacy level and found that the FamLit intervention did improve medication adherence during the intervention and the intervention effect was significantly sustained 3 months after the intervention was complete. Recently, Wu received an R01 from the NIH/NINR to conduct an adequately powered randomized controlled trial to evaluate the sustained effects of this FamLit intervention on medication adherence and hospitalization/death. In addition, she just completed an intervention study to polit-test an intervention that integrated remote monitoring devices to improve symptom perception (iMASTER) among patients with heart failure. Wu has worked with four interdisciplinary research teams (three heart failure research teams and one hypertension research team) whose members are involved in research on management of heart failure and hypertension using a variety of approaches that include self-care strategies, health literacy, mindfulness training, improving medication adherence and symptom perception, reducing health disparities, and manipulating psychosocial and environmental factors that influence outcomes in patients with hypertension and cardiovascular diseases.