Health Equity and Rural Education (HERE!) Clinical Trial

Summary

The goal of this community-engaged research is two-fold. The first goal is to gather stakeholder feedback to inform a school-based community health worker intervention with youth with poor school attendance and an enhanced usual care condition. The second goal is to evaluate the feasibility of implementing the school-based community health worker intervention and enhanced usual care approach within rural schools.

The main question it aims to answer is whether it is feasibile to recruit children with poor school attendance and their families to the intervention, to complete the trauma-informed intervention, and to complete the associated study measures of meeting social determinants of health/mental health needs, school-based health center utilization, and behavioral helath symptoms. At least 38 rural students in grades 6-12 with poor school attendance and their parents/guardians will meet with the school-based community health worker for support around social determinants of health needs that may be barriers to attendance. Researchers will also assess the feasibility of recruiting at least 10 rural students and their parents/guardians to complete the study measures in an enhanced usual care condition in which the school-based health center without a school-based community health worker is reminded of the availability of an online social services directory.

Conditions

• Behavioral Symptoms
• Community Health Workers
• Social Determinants of Health
• Educational Problems

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

School-Based Community Health Worker (SB-CHW) intervention

The school-based community health worker will support students with chronic poor attendance and their parent/guardian for a minimum of two 30-minute encounters focused on addressing social determinants needs, understanding the range/student encounter varies greatly due to the intensity of the social need(s) (e.g., crisis/noncrisis) and the number of needs being jointly addressed. The SB-CHW will build relationships across encounters and apply trauma-informed best practices.

BEHAVIORAL

Enhanced Usual Care (EUC) Methods

The network of school-based health centers without school-based community health workers will receive reminders of the the existing online social services directory.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR)

  collaborator NIH

• National Institutes of Health (NIH)

  collaborator NIH

• University of Kansas Medical Center

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Eve-Lynn Nelson, PhD · University of Kansas Medical Center

Study Design

Allocation

NON_RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

12 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2026-05-15

Primary Completion

2026-12-31

Completion

2026-12-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations