Improving the Mental Health of Home Health Aides

Summary

The goal of this study is to improve the mental health of home health aides, a workforce that provides care for adults at home but whose own health has been historically poor. The main questions the study aims to answer are:

* Will a health program called Living Healthy, which provides health education and support with positive thinking, be used by home health aides and do they like it?
* Does Living Healthy actually improve home health aides' mood compared to what they usually do to take care of themselves?

Participants in the study will get an 8-week health program called Living Healthy over 3 months. Some of the participants will also have a 'peer coach' who is another home health aide who's been trained to help them with the program and learn some ways to feel better.

The study will compare the experiences of home health aides who get Living Healthy plus a peer coach with those who only get the Living Healthy program.

Conditions

• Mental Health Issue

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Living Healthy educational program + peer coaching

The Living Healthy intervention is an 8-session health education program with cognitive behavioral training (CBT) techniques. For those in the interventional arm, the Living Healthy intervention program will be delivered by trained peer coaches by telephone or Zoom over 3 months. In this study, trained peer coaches are trained home health aides themselves. Informed by social cognitive theory (SCT), peer coaches train participants on cognitive behavior techniques and empower participants to adopt positive health behaviors through personalized goal setting, motivational interviewing, and peer modeling. Each content-based session incorporates principles of CBT, teaching participants to recognize and modify negative thinking and modifying outcome expectations through self-monitoring, reflection, and practice.

BEHAVIORAL

Living Healthy educational program

Participants assigned to receive health education alone will be asked to read health education (online; covering aspects of the Living Healthy program) which corresponds to a weekly topic about health. They will be called by a research assistant each week to prompt them to do this and answer any questions they might have about the materials.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

  collaborator OTHER

• Weill Medical College of Cornell University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Madeline R Sterling, MD, MPH, MS · Weill Medical College of Cornell University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2025-01-27

Primary Completion

2026-06-30

Completion

2026-06-30

Countries

• United States

Study Locations