Narrative Intervention for Chronic Illness- Heart Failure Trial (NICI-HF)

The Narrative Intervention for Chronic Illness-Heart Failure (NICI-HF) offers an asynchronous interactive text behavioral health intervention to advance behavioral health equity by facilitating access to care for people adjusting to living with heart failure (HF). The proposed study will recruit up to 70 people living with heart failure. This study will gain insight into living with heart failure and learn if the narrative-based intervention is feasible and acceptable for people living with heart failure. The study has two specific aims:

Aim 1: Evaluate the effects of NICI-HF intervention on standard behavioral outcomes. The study investigators will review depression with the Personal Health Questionnaire-9 (primary) and anxiety with the General Anxiety Disorder-7 (secondary) outcomes, and explore self-care with the Self Care for Heart Failure Index by comparing the sham control (n=30) and NICI-HF intervention (n=30) groups at baseline, three months, and six months.

Aim 2: Refine NICI-HF for feasibility and acceptability to support HF self-care and burdensome symptom management and to increase behavioral health equity by improving proximity to services. The study investigators will use standard implementation domains to tailor the intervention for HF using qualitative semi-structured interviews and mixed methods analysis. The study investigators will refine and manualize the intervention for future R01 testing across chronic illnesses with diverse and marginalized populations and service delivery models.