Pai Lab
The Pai Lab is devoted to promoting the health of children and their caregivers using a child and family centered collaborative biopsychosocial approach. We partner with children and their families to understand how they manage the treatments that are prescribed by their medical teams and how integrating these treatments into their daily lives impacts their physical and psychological health. Our team uses a broad range of research methods and designs including qualitative methods, prospective studies, randomized clinical trials and implementation science methods to learn from patients and families how to improve patient and family care and health outcomes. Over her 25-year research career, she Dr. Pai has served as principal investigator or co-investigator on multiple federal, state, and foundation funded studies conducted with patients from our backyard in Columbus and across the world.
Treatment adherence and self-management behaviors directly influence medical outcomes of children. Although treatment regimens can appear deceivingly simple, the consistent implementation of treatment regimens can be incredibly challenging. We aim to make it easier for children and families to follow the recommendations and prescriptions given to them by their medical teams. This includes identifying the factors that make taking care of a condition and/or illness easier or more difficult and using this knowledge to develop interventions that support patients and families in their self-management goals.
Using a biopsychosocial approach, our team partners with patients, families and medical teams to incorporate multiple perspectives and to identify unique facilitators and barriers to medication adherence and psychological adjustment in the context of medical conditions and illnesses. When developing interventions, we tailor our approaches based on the input from patients and families. We aim to develop interventions provide families with the tools they need to maximize medication adherence as well as physical and psychological functioning.
Research Projects
Dr. Pai, in collaboration with Drs. Jaimie Nathan, Jennifer Ladd, and Hannah McKillop, is conducting, what is to our knowledge, the first study to examine medication and enzyme adherence in children following received a total pancreatectomy and islet autotransplantation (TPIAT). Very little is known about medication adherence in this rare disease population. Therefore, we are conducting a prospective mixed methods study including qualitative interviews of caregivers of children who have received a TPIAT to learn about the unique challenges they face when managing outpatient medication regimens and co-develop an intervention to support and promote adherence.
Families to take part in the ADAPT Study will take part in four interviews to collect qualitative information on managing their child's medication and health care at different time points after TPIAT. Families will also use an electronic monitor to track adherence to their pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy.
The purpose of this study is to develop and refine an intervention to improve adherence to immunosuppressant and antimicrobial medication in children recently discharged from the hospital following a hematopoietic stem cell transplant.
This study will administer the MedMemos intervention to caregivers both before and after discharge from the hospital. Caregivers of children who have received a bone marrow transplant will take part in two sessions while inpatient and two sessions will outpatient. Families will also use electronic monitors to track adherence as well as complete surveys.
Dr. Pai is collaborating with Dr. Lisa Schwartz of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia on the REACH:SMART Study. This study will test the efficacy of an adaptive intervention designed to improve engagement of adolescent and young adult childhood cancer survivors in long term follow-up care.
Adolescents and young adults who are enrolled will receive either low touch, written information or high touch content along with access to a mobile app that provides general health information and tailored information related to their specific treatment.
This study is funded by a grant awarded to Dr. Lisa Schwartz from the NIH - National Cancer Institute. The grant number is 5 R01 CA273328-02.
