Jia-Rong Wu, PhD, RN, FAHA, FAAN

Associate Professor

Jia-Rong Wu received her undergraduate degree in nursing at the National Taiwan University (BSN). She received her master’s degree in nursing at the University of Pennsylvania and her Doctor of Philosophy in Nursing from the University of Kentucky. The focus of her doctoral studies was factors of poor medication adherence and how poor medication adherence affects health outcomes in adults with chronic heart failure. She worked as a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Kentucky to develop and test a theory-based educational counseling intervention to improve medication adherence in patients with heart failure.

Dr. Wu is an associate 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. Dr. Wu’s current work focuses on improving management of heart failure/uncontrolled hypertension using self-care strategies, health literacy, medication adherence, health disparities, and psychosocial and environmental factors that influence self-care behaviors and health-related outcomes (e.g., functional status, health-related quality of life, 10-year cardiovascular risk, hospitalizations, and death) among adults with heart failure and those with or at risk for cardiovascular disease throughout the life-course. 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, Dr. 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, Dr. Wu is conducting a pilot study to test an intervention that integrates remote monitoring devices to improve medication adherence and symptom perception (iMASTER) among patients with heart failure.

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