AI-enabled Communication to Advance Research Engagement (AI-CARE) (AI-CARE)
August 24, 2026 updated by: Albert Einstein College of Medicine
AI-enabled Communication to Advance Research Engagement
The objective of AI-CARE is to train researchers and community members to use artificial intelligence (AI) to create plain-language summaries of research studies and to determine whether a co-creation process for developing these summaries improves understanding and relevance of the research, confidence in AI and in institutions, and AI literacy.
The hypothesis is that AI-generated research summaries, co-developed with researchers and community partners, will significantly improve confidence in research and institutions, understanding and accessibility of the research, and appropriateness of the summary compared with standard researcher-generated materials, and that the educational and co-creation process will build community members' AI literacy and confidence in using AI, as well as researchers' readiness to use and comfort with using AI for communicating research.
Study Overview
Status
Not yet recruiting
Conditions
Detailed Description
This research project consists of four specific aims.
Specific Aims 2 and 3 meet the NIH definition of a clinical trial.
Accordingly, this ClinicalTrials.gov
registration describes only the clinical trial conducted under Specifics Aims 2 and 3.
The remaining aims involve non-interventional research activities and are not included in this registration.
Aims 2 and 3 are an intentional sequential design.
Study Type
Interventional
Enrollment (Estimated)
250
Phase
- Not Applicable
Contacts and Locations
This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.
Study Contact
- Name: Jessica Kahn, MD, MPH
- Phone Number: 718-430-4317
- Email: jessica.kahn@einsteinmd.edu
Study Locations
-
-
New York
-
The Bronx, New York, United States, 10461
- Albert Einstein College Of Medicine
-
-
Participation Criteria
Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.
Eligibility Criteria
Ages Eligible for Study
- Adult
- Older Adult
Accepts Healthy Volunteers
Yes
Description
Inclusion Criteria:
- English-speaking individuals at least 18 years of age
Exclusion Criteria:
- Individuals unable to provide informed consent
- Participants who have had formal training in AI prompt engineering
The eligibility criteria are common to both Aims 2 and 3.
Study Plan
This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.
How is the study designed?
Design Details
- Primary Purpose: Other
- Allocation: Randomized
- Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
- Masking: Double
Arms and Interventions
Participant Group / Arm |
Intervention / Treatment |
|---|---|
|
Experimental: Standard AI prompt - Aim 3
Participants receive plain-language research summaries generated using a standardized AI prompt without researcher prompt engineering or community co-design.
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Participants review plain-language research summaries generated using a standardized AI prompt without researcher prompt engineering or community co-design.
|
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Experimental: Researcher prompt engineering - Aim 3
Participants receive summaries generated after researchers complete AI prompt-engineering training and develop optimized prompts.
|
Participants review AI-generated summaries generated after researchers complete AI prompt-engineering training and develop optimized prompts.
|
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Experimental: Community co-created AI summaries - Aim 3
Participants receive summaries developed through an iterative community-researcher co-creation process following AI training and structured co-design sessions.
|
Participants review AI-generated summaries refined through iterative collaboration between researchers and community members using community-engaged co-design principles.
|
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Experimental: Co-creation cohort - Aim 2
Participants will be divided into three groups, each assigned 1-2 research summaries, and will engage in structured co-creation sessions.
The goals of will be to: 1) define readability and appropriateness, 2) review AI-generated drafts produced by the summary engine, and 3) provide feedback to refine prompts and outputs.
Several iteration cycles will be conducted as needed, with documentation of any changes and the rationale for making decisions.
In this way the team will develop a modular AI "summary engine" that transforms research products (e.g., manuscripts) into draft community-facing materials using co-created prompts and templates.
Co-creation will be conducted during one or two facilitated sessions.
Each session will include structured review of drafts, guided discussion, and documented decisions regarding readability, transparency, visuals or graphics, etc. Iteration cycles will continue until pre-specified stopping criteria are met.
|
The co-designed summaries which result from this process will become one of the three intervention conditions evaluated in Aim 3.
|
What is the study measuring?
Primary Outcome Measures
Outcome Measure |
Measure Description |
Time Frame |
|---|---|---|
|
Confidence in medical research and researchers - Aim 3
Time Frame: Immediately following review of research summary, up to 1 hour
|
This is the primary outcome measure for both Aim 2 and Aim 3.
This outcome measure will be assessed using subscale 1 of the PoRT scale.
PoRT is a validated, self-report measure that assesses confidence in medical research and researchers.
Subscale 1 contains 9 items, with response options for each item ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree); thus the subscale ranges from 9 to 45. Higher scores indicate higher confidence.
|
Immediately following review of research summary, up to 1 hour
|
|
Confidence in medical research and researchers - Aim 2
Time Frame: Immediately before the co-creation process and immediately following the co-creation process, up to 1 hour
|
This is the primary outcome measure for both Aim 2 and Aim 3.
This outcome measure will be assessed using subscale 1 of the PoRT scale.
PoRT is a validated, self-report measure that assesses confidence in medical research and researchers.
Subscale 1 contains 9 items, with response options for each item ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree); thus the subscale ranges from 9 to 45. Higher scores indicate higher confidence.
|
Immediately before the co-creation process and immediately following the co-creation process, up to 1 hour
|
Secondary Outcome Measures
Outcome Measure |
Measure Description |
Time Frame |
|---|---|---|
|
Perceived appropriateness of research summary - Aim 2
Time Frame: Immediately before the co-creation process and immediately following the co-creation process, up to 1 hour
|
Perceived appropriateness of research summary will be assessed using an 8-item scale adapted from the literature which measures community and personal relevance, fit and respect, language and representation, and confidence and resonance (each of the four constructs is measured using two items).
Responses for the eight items range from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree; possible scale score thus ranges from 8 to 40.
Higher scores indicate higher perceived appropriateness.
|
Immediately before the co-creation process and immediately following the co-creation process, up to 1 hour
|
|
Institutional confidence - Aim 2
Time Frame: Immediately before the co-creation process and immediately following the co-creation process, up to 1 hour
|
This is a validated measure of confidence in health care institutions, assessed using the MMI scale which contains 7 items.
Responses range from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree); thus, the range of scale scores is 7 to 35.
Lower scores indicate higher confidence.
|
Immediately before the co-creation process and immediately following the co-creation process, up to 1 hour
|
|
Research comprehension - Aim 2
Time Frame: Immediately before the co-creation process and immediately following the co-creation process, up to 1 hour
|
Research study specific comprehension which will consist of 25 true-false statements (5 items for each of the 5 research studies chosen by researchers and community participants that will be used for creation of plain-language summaries).
Correct answers = 1, and incorrect answers = 0.
The range will be 0 to 25, with higher scores indicating better comprehension.
|
Immediately before the co-creation process and immediately following the co-creation process, up to 1 hour
|
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Perceived appropriateness of research summary - Aim 3
Time Frame: Immediately following review of research summary, up to 1 hour
|
Perceived appropriateness of research summary will be assessed using an 8-item scale adapted from the literature which measures community and personal relevance, fit and respect, language and representation, and confidence and resonance (each of the four constructs is measured using two items).
Responses for the eight items range from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree; possible scale score thus ranges from 8 to 40.
Higher scores indicate higher perceived appropriateness.
|
Immediately following review of research summary, up to 1 hour
|
|
Institutional confidence - Aim 3
Time Frame: Aim 3: Immediately following review of research summary, up to 1 hour
|
This is a validated measure of confidence in health care institutions, assessed using the MMI scale which contains 7 items.
Responses range from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree); thus, the range of scale scores is 7 to 35.
Lower scores indicate higher confidence.
|
Aim 3: Immediately following review of research summary, up to 1 hour
|
|
Research comprehension - Aim 3
Time Frame: Immediately following review of research summary, up to 1 hour
|
Research study specific comprehension which will consist of 25 true-false statements (5 items for each of the 5 research studies chosen by researchers and community participants that will be used for creation of plain-language summaries).
Correct answers = 1, and incorrect answers = 0.
The range will be 0 to 25, with higher scores indicating better comprehension.
|
Immediately following review of research summary, up to 1 hour
|
Collaborators and Investigators
This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.
Investigators
- Principal Investigator: Jessica Kahn, MD, MPH, Albert Einstein College Of Medicine
Publications and helpful links
The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.
General Publications
- Kreuter MW, Wray RJ. Tailored and targeted health communication: strategies for enhancing information relevance. Am J Health Behav. 2003 Nov-Dec;27 Suppl 3:S227-32. doi: 10.5993/ajhb.27.1.s3.6.
- Shoemaker SJ, Wolf MS, Brach C. Development of the Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool (PEMAT): a new measure of understandability and actionability for print and audiovisual patient information. Patient Educ Couns. 2014 Sep;96(3):395-403. doi: 10.1016/j.pec.2014.05.027. Epub 2014 Jun 12.
- Snyder HR, Miyake A, Hankin BL. Advancing understanding of executive function impairments and psychopathology: bridging the gap between clinical and cognitive approaches. Front Psychol. 2015 Mar 26;6:328. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00328. eCollection 2015.
- Marafino BJ, Dudley RA, Shah NH, Chen JH. Accurate and interpretable intensive care risk adjustment for fused clinical data with generalized additive models. AMIA Jt Summits Transl Sci Proc. 2018 May 18;2017:166-175. eCollection 2018.
- O'Connor MA, Erasmus JH, Randall S, Archer J, Lewis TB, Brown B, Fredericks M, Groenier S, Iwayama N, Ahrens C, Garrison W, Wangari S, Guerriero KA, Fuller DH. A Single Dose SARS-CoV-2 Replicon RNA Vaccine Induces Cellular and Humoral Immune Responses in Simian Immunodeficiency Virus Infected and Uninfected Pigtail Macaques. Front Immunol. 2021 Dec 21;12:800723. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2021.800723. eCollection 2021.
- Holzer JK, Ellis L, Merritt MW. Why we need community engagement in medical research. J Investig Med. 2014 Aug;62(6):851-5. doi: 10.1097/JIM.0000000000000097.
Study record dates
These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.
Study Major Dates
Study Start (Estimated)
September 1, 2026
Primary Completion (Estimated)
September 1, 2028
Study Completion (Estimated)
September 1, 2028
Study Registration Dates
First Submitted
August 24, 2026
First Submitted That Met QC Criteria
August 24, 2026
First Posted (Actual)
August 27, 2026
Study Record Updates
Last Update Posted (Actual)
August 27, 2026
Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria
August 24, 2026
Last Verified
August 1, 2026
More Information
Terms related to this study
Keywords
Other Study ID Numbers
- 2026-17824
- UM1TR004400 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)
Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)
Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?
UNDECIDED
IPD Plan Description
Being assessed
Drug and device information, study documents
Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product
No
Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product
No
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