The Project Talk Trial is a continuation of an ongoing collaboration between Penn State College of Medicine and Hospice Foundation of America. Our teams have been collaborating since 2018 on advance care planning research. We recently published a national study of the conversation game, Hello, funded by the John and Wauna Harman Foundation, which was foundational to the creation of the Project Talk Trial.
We're excited to welcome the University of Kentucky to our collaborative as we advance our shared goals of increasing awareness and engaging underserved communities in advance care planning.
Project Leads
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Lauren Jodi Van Scoy, MD
Lauren Jodi Van Scoy, MD is a Professor of Medicine, Humanities, and Public Health Sciences. She joined the faculty of Penn State College of Medicine in 2013 and practices Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and was recently awarded the Parker B. Francis Jo Rae Wright Award for scientific excellence. Her research studies end-of-life issues and includes advanced care planning, communication, and end-of-life decision-making. She is the director of Project Talk, a research program that studies the impact of innovative conversational tools in a variety of settings including the intensive care unit and community groups. Her research includes theory-based approaches to the assessment of communication quality and behaviors related to end-of-life conversation. She is the author of an ICU family meeting tool, ‘Let’s Talk’ that is currently under study.
Dr. Van Scoy is also a mixed methodologist with expertise in using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies to examine behavioral interventions in randomized controlled trials. As co-founder and co-director of the Penn State Qualitative and Mixed Methods Core (QMMC), she serves as a methodology consultant for a wide variety of mixed-method projects and topics, including large, randomized controlled trials, pharmacological drug trials, and education projects.
Her research profile including grants and publications can be found here: https://pennstate.pure.elsevier.com/en/persons/lauren-van-scoy
A listing of publications can be found here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/lauren.van%20scoy.1/bibliography/public/
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Amy Tucci
Amy Tucci is President and CEO of Hospice Foundation of America (HFA). She began work with HFA in 2004, directing its national annual Living with Grief® educational event and its Washington, DC office and staff. She has produced numerous educational programs on advanced illness care and grief and has edited more than a dozen books on topics involving end of life, including ethics; pain management; child and adolescent grief; grief theory; aging; diversity; and spirituality. In addition to carrying out HFA’s core mission, Amy has overseen or is actively engaged with several national grant-funded initiatives related to advance care planning, children and funerals, and autism and grief. Prior to joining HFA, Amy was a press secretary on Capitol Hill for the Committee on Ways and Means; vice president of the Alliance of Community Health Plans, and director of communications and membership for the American Public Human Services Association. She began her career as a newspaper journalist. Amy is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and currently serves on HFA’s Board of Directors, the Board of Consultors for the M. Louise Fitzpatrick College of Nursing at Villanova University, and the Leadership and Development Committee for the Association for Death, Education, and Counseling.
