Carolina Heart Alliance Networking for Greater Equity

Summary

In North Carolina, and nationally, cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death and disease among adults. North Carolina adults have high rates of CVD behavioral risk factors such as physical inactivity, unhealthy eating habits, smoking, and being overweight and obese. To help reduce these risks, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Prevention Research Center (UNC PRC) will test the effectiveness and implementation of Carolina Heart Alliance Networking for Greater Equality (CHANGE).

CHANGE is a health promotion strategy to link public health and clinical services through community health workers (CHWs). Primary care clinics, public health, and CHWs all have strengths in addressing chronic disease risk factors, but there is a widely recognized gap in the coordination among them. The CHANGE strategy will use CHWs as members of primary care and public health teams to distribute a behavioral change intervention called Heart-to-Health to a total of 480 clinic patients at risk for CVD. Heart-to-Health is an effective lifestyle and medication adherence intervention that includes a computerized decision aid to guide delivery of tailored counseling sessions. The counseling sessions are focused on diet, physical activity, tobacco cessation, and medication adherence and are facilitated by CHWs using tablet computers. The CHWs will use tablet computers to communicate with a medical home team about important patient health information to be acted on in real time. The CHWs also will link participants to public health and other community based resources to support behavior change. The CHANGE strategy will be tested in one underserved, rural community and then replicated in a second community.

Researchers from the UNC PRC will examine whether CHANGE is effective at increasing the reach of clinic and public community services to at risk populations and at improving composite coronary heart disease risk.

Conditions

• Cardiovascular Disease (CVD)

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

CHANGE Study

The CHANGE strategy is designed to improve the dissemination and implementation of CVD EBIs by strengthening clinical-community linkages

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

  collaborator FED

• University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Samuel Cykert, MD · University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Study Design

Allocation

NA

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

19 Years

Max Age

80 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2016-09-11

Primary Completion

2019-09-29

Completion

2019-09-29

Countries

• United States

Study Locations