Insurance, Health Clinical Trial
Official title:
A Partnership Approach to Enhance Health Care Literacy
With the help of local focus groups, the investigators are designing and testing a website to help urban people have better access to health care through understanding their insurance options better. They hypothesize that once individuals engage with the website and go through all of its modules, they will: 1) become more informed consumers of the ACA and its health insurance options; 2) enroll in an insurance plan; and 3) better leverage the benefits of their existing plans."
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has afforded millions of Americans with both greater access to
and greater affordability of health insurance and its associated benefits. However, limited
resources have been devoted for effective ACA outreach and enrollment - especially in states
that did not create their own health insurance exchanges such as Michigan. Federally
Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) in Detroit are vital to meeting the health and medical care
needs of the local community. However, they face long-term sustainability challenges,
particularly related to their financial capacity, which can be augmented by increasing the
number of insured patients that they serve.
The goal of the proposed project is to establish a new community-based participatory research
(CBPR) partnership aimed at enhancing health care literacy of community residents of Detroit
as it relates to the implementation of the ACA, through the design, implementation and
evaluation of the effectiveness of an intervention trial. In accordance with the principles
of CBPR, a Steering Committee will be established, involving four FQHCs and social service
agencies working in Detroit, four community partner organizations, and academic members of
the research team. The investigators will first conduct 9 focus groups with Detroit residents
who use the local FQHCs and social service agencies and 1 focus group with health care
navigators in order to inform the development of the e-Health intervention and better
ascertain the healthcare literacy challenges residents face accessing information about the
ACA. The investigators propose to develop and evaluate a healthcare literacy, e-Health
intervention embedded with short, culturally and locally-tailored videos informed by behavior
change principles that will teach patients/families about: the importance and benefits of
health insurance, ACA coverage provisions and local insurance options available to them, the
specifics of the new law and how it affects them, and how to navigate local systems and
resources to obtain and maintain health insurance. They will recruit 240 patients/families
seen at 4 local-area FQHC and social service sites to examine whether patient use of the
website increases health care literacy and encourages individuals to enroll in health
insurance plans. They will employ a randomized cross-over lagged research design where 120
patient/families seen at 2 FQHC and social service sites will be approached to use the
website. The investigators will also identify 120 patients/families seen at 2 other sites who
will serve as a lagged control group in the first segment of the study. Both the 120
intervention patients/families and the lagged control patient/families will be asked to
complete a questionnaire about the ACA and other pertinent issues at the onset of the study.
Six months later, they will again survey the patients in both groups (using the same survey
instrument) to see whether any differences between the groups can be detected after 6 months.
At that time, the 100 patient/families in the lagged control group will then be given the
website (treatment) and they will follow them for 3 months. The investigators hypothesize
that once individuals engage with the website and go through all of its modules, they will:
1) become more informed consumers of the ACA and its health insurance options; 2) enroll in
an insurance plan; and 3) better leverage the benefits of their existing plans.
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| Status | Clinical Trial | Phase | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Not yet recruiting |
NCT02696174 -
Effectiveness of A Health Microinsurance Scheme for Private Primary Care in Malaysia
|
N/A |