ACHIEVE Hearing Intervention Follow-Up Study

Aging Clinical Trial

Official title:

Randomized Trial of Telehealth vs. Conventional Hearing Care Delivery in the ACHIEVE Study

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Active, not recruiting

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT05070429
• Other study ID #: IRB00284937
• Secondary ID: R01DC019408
• Status: Active, not recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: November 12, 2021
• Est. completion date: June 30, 2025

Study information

• Verified date: February 2024
• Source: Johns Hopkins University
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

The ACHIEVE Hearing Intervention Follow-Up study is a randomized trial of a telehealth versus conventional clinic-based hearing healthcare (HHC) delivery model among older adults who are existing hearing aid users to determine if a telehealth HHC model improves hearing aid use and other communication outcomes compared to clinic-based HHC.

Description:

This study is a multi-site randomized efficacy trial of a telehealth versus conventional clinic-based hearing healthcare (HHC) delivery model among older adults who are existing hearing aid users to determine if a telehealth HHC model improves hearing aid use and other communication outcomes compared to clinic-based HHC. Participants will be recruited from the ongoing Aging & Cognitive Health Evaluation in Elders (ACHIEVE) randomized trial in which the investigators recruited 977 adults ages 70-84 with untreated mild-to-moderate hearing loss from January 2018 to October 2019 who were randomized to a hearing intervention (i.e., conventional clinic-based delivery of hearing services and technologies) versus a successful aging education control intervention (i.e., one-on-one sessions with a health educator on topics important for healthy aging). From 2021-2022, as participants in the hearing intervention group (fixed sample, n=490) complete the pre-specified three years of follow-up in the ACHIEVE trial, the investigators will recruit these existing hearing aid users and randomize the participants 1:1 to receive continued conventional clinic-based delivery of hearing care services versus a model that incorporates telehealth. Accounting for loss to follow-up and death, the investigators conservatively estimate that n=400 participants currently in the hearing intervention group will be recruited into this two-year follow-up study. The main analyses will be conducted at one-year post-randomization when hours of hearing aid use (primary outcome) and patient-centered hearing and communication, social functioning, and quality of life secondary outcomes will be contrasted between the two intervention groups. After one year of follow-up, participants randomized to the conventional HHC arm will cross-over and also receive telehealth HHC, while participants randomized to the telehealth HHC arm will continue to receive telehealth HHC. All participants will continue to be followed for 2 years post-randomization for observational analyses, with data collection follow-up visits occurring every 6 months.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Active, not recruiting
• Enrollment: 339
• Est. completion date: June 30, 2025
• Est. primary completion date: January 10, 2024
• Accepts healthy volunteers: No
• Gender: All
• Age group: 73 Years to 88 Years

Eligibility

To be eligible for the current study, participants must:

• have been eligible for and participated in the hearing intervention arm of the ACHIEVE trial (see original eligibility criteria below)
• agree to be randomized to receive continued hearing care via either a telehealth or conventional delivery model, and
• agree to participate in the follow-up study.

Original ACHIEVE Inclusion Criteria:

• Age 70-84 years
• Community-dwelling, fluent English speaker
• Availability of participant in area for study duration
• Adult-onset hearing impairment, defined as four-frequency pure tone average (PTA, 0.5-4 kilohertz (kHz), better ear) =30 decibel (dB) hearing level (HL) (decibels hearing level) & <70 dB HL
• Speech recognition scores in quiet =60% in better ear
• Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE) score =23 for participants with high school degree or less, or =25 for participants with some college education or more

Original ACHIEVE Exclusion Criteria:

• Reported disability in =2 activities of daily living (ADLs)
• Vision impairment (worse than 20/63 on the Minnesota Near Vision Card)
• Self-reported use of a hearing aid in the past 1 year
• Medical contraindication to use of hearing aids (e.g., draining ear)
• Unwilling to wear hearing aids on a daily basis
• Conductive hearing impairment with air-bone gap >15 dB in two or more contiguous frequencies in both ears

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Aging
• Hearing Loss

Intervention

Other:
• Clinic-based audiological rehabilitative service delivery
Participants will have scheduled clinic-based visits at 6 and 12 months post-randomization to reinforce self-management strategies and perform hearing aid checks.
• Telehealth audiological rehabilitative service delivery
Participants' scheduled clinic-based visits will be complemented with asynchronous and synchronous telehealth that will allow for routine troubleshooting of communication challenges, hearing aid technical issues, and reinforcement of self-management support strategies. At an initial session, participants will be instructed in the use of a study-provided, internet-enabled tablet device for telehealth sessions, re-introduced to the hearing loss toolkit for self-management and C2Hear Reusable Learning Objects within the context of the telehealth platform, re-evaluated on the Client Oriented Scale of Improvement (COSI) goals. Two remote follow-up sessions will be scheduled 3 and 6 weeks later to confirm participants' comfort with the telehealth platform and then completed every 6 months, in addition to scheduled 6-month clinic-based visits.

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
United States	Johns Hopkins Comstock Center for Public Health Research and Prevention	Hagerstown	Maryland
United States	University of Mississippi Medical Center	Jackson	Mississippi
United States	University of Minnesota	Minneapolis	Minnesota
United States	Wake Forest University	Winston-Salem	North Carolina

Sponsors (7)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
Johns Hopkins University	National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), University of Minnesota, University of Mississippi Medical Center, University of North Carolina, University of South Florida, Wake Forest University

Country where clinical trial is conducted

United States, 

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Average daily hours of hearing aid use	Average daily hours of hearing aid use is obtained using objective hearing aid data logging. If a participant wears a hearing aid in both ears, then the ear with the greatest number of hours will be selected.	Up to 1 year
Secondary	Treatment satisfaction as assessed by a single item from the International Outcome Inventory - Comprehensive Hearing Intervention (IOI-CHI) scale	The IOI-CHI is an interviewer-administered scale that consists of 6 items where participants self-report satisfaction with the hearing intervention using a 5-point Likert scale; treatment satisfaction is based on the item "Considering everything, do you think your present hearing intervention is worth the trouble?"), with scores ranging from 1 to 5 and higher scores indicating more treatment satisfaction.	1 year
Secondary	Ability to hear for primary communication goal as assessed by a single item from the Client-Oriented Scale of Improvement (COSI) goals achievement questionnaire	Achievement of COSI goals will be assessed by asking participants to rate the current amount of time they are able to hear for their primary goal using a 5-point Likert scale, with higher scores indicating ability to hear more of the time.	1 year
Secondary	Hearing-specific quality of life as assessed by the Hearing Handicap Inventory for the Elderly - Screening Version (HHIE-S) questionnaire	The HHIE-S is an interviewer-administered questionnaire that consists of 10 items; participants rate whether hearing loss affects them in different situations (yes, sometimes, or no); the total score is the sum of all responses and ranges from 0 to 20, with higher scores indicating greater hearing issues.	1 year