Alabama Veterans Rural Health Initiative

Summary

The purpose of the Alabama Veterans Rural Health Initiative is to better understand access and barriers to health care and to enhance veteran enrollment or engagement in health care services of veterans residing in rural areas. It describes an intervention that is adaptable for use by other VA facilities that serve veterans in rural settings, and importantly, this study will improve our understanding of barriers to care and evaluate a method for enhancing access to care. The anticipated impact is that more veterans in rural areas who were previously under-utilizing VA services will receive and attend a health care appointment. This gain may improve preventative and primary care health care and reduce long term health care morbidity, expense and burden. This study may also identify previously unknown barriers to care that can be surmounted by innovative access and health care delivery approaches.

The primary objective is to evaluate an innovative approach for enhanced enrollment and engagement outreach intervention (EEE intervention) for rural veterans in VA health care services. This study entails a two-cell design, addressing this objective with a prospective, randomized controlled multi-site clinical trial that evaluates an active intervention compared to administrative outreach (AO, control condition) on whether or not a rurally-residing veteran obtains and attends a VA appointment.

Conditions

• Problems With Access to Health Care
• Health Behavior

Interventions

OTHER

Enhanced Engagement and Enrollment (EEE)

Consists of motivational interviewing, educational outreach, and patient navigation.

OTHER

Administrative Outreach (AO)

Consists of giving information about enrolling for VA medical care or scheduling an appointment

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Tuscaloosa Veterans Affairs Medical Center

  collaborator FED

• VA Office of Research and Development

  collaborator FED

• US Department of Veterans Affairs

  collaborator FED

• Tuscaloosa Research & Education Advancement Corporation

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Lori Davis, M.D. · Tuscaloosa VAMC

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

SCREENING

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

19 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2008-10-01

Primary Completion

2010-10-01

Completion

2013-10-01

Countries

• United States

Study Locations