Improving Housing Outcomes for Homeless Veterans

Improving Housing Outcomes for Homeless Veterans (CDA 15-074)

Many homeless Veterans with serious mental illness (SMI) enroll in the VA's Supported Housing (VASH) program but struggle to obtain and sustain housing. Social skills are an important-but underappreciated-determinant of housing outcomes for homeless adults. The investigators hypothesize that homeless Veterans with SMI who participate in a social skills training program, tailored for housing-related social skills, will obtain housing quicker, retain housing longer, and show improved mental health outcomes compared to Veterans with similar needs not participating in such a program.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Veterans; Homeless Persons; Mentally Ill Persons
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Housing Skills Training Group

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 35
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • California
    • West Los Angeles, California, United States, 90073-1003
      • VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, West Los Angeles, CA

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

Study Population

Homeless Veterans with Serious Mental Illness who are engaged in the homeless program at VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Identified by VA Greater Los Angeles homeless program staff as a participant in Housing Skills Training:

  • Must have a history of homelessness
  • Must be a Veteran over the age of 18 years
  • Must have a serious mental illness (mood disorder, anxiety disorder, psychotic disorder)

Exclusion Criteria:

None

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
• Allocation: N/A
• Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

1

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Housing Skills Training Group Patients; Homeless Veterans with serious mental illness who are inpatient at the VA Greater Los Angeles Domiciliary or enrolled in a VA Supported Housing (VASH) program and participating in a Housing Skills Training Group as part of routine clinical care. The intervention was 12 sessions long, with one session per week.	Behavioral: Housing Skills Training Group; 12-session social skills training group for persons with homeless experiences and serious mental illness delivered once a week for 12 weeks

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Client Satisfaction Questionnaire - 8	Acceptability of the intervention to participants Scores range from 8 to 32, with higher values indicating higher satisfaction (no specific cut-offs to indicate specific levels of satisfaction)	12 weeks after baseline assessment at start of intervention

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Percent Days Housed for One Year After Intervention Completion	We will use the medical record, augmented by the residential time line follow back, to assess longitudinal housing outcomes for Veterans receiving this intervention	1 year

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: VA Office of Research and Development
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Sonya Emi Gabrielian, MD MPH, VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, West Los Angeles, CA

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): June 26, 2018
• Primary Completion (Actual): August 23, 2022
• Study Completion (Actual): August 23, 2022

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: August 21, 2018
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: August 22, 2018
• First Posted (Actual): August 24, 2018

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): July 19, 2024
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: April 10, 2024
• Last Verified: April 1, 2024

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Social Skills; Housing
• Other Study ID Numbers: CDX 18-004; CDA 15-074 (Other Grant/Funding Number: VA HSR&D)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: YES
• IPD Plan Description: The PI will create de-identified, study-specific datasets that include all variables in a publication. Some loss of information might occur given the need to remove PHI. The PI will replace social security and medical station numbers with study-specific numbers. The PI will drop date of birth and replace age with age categories, in accordance with PHI requirements for people 85 years of age and older. Dates of service will be replaced with year dummies.
• IPD Sharing Time Frame: Datasets meeting VA standards for disclosure to the public will be made available within 1 year of publication.
• IPD Sharing Access Criteria: Prior to distribution, a local privacy officer will certify that all datasets contains no PHI. Final data sets will be maintained locally until enterprise-level resources become available for long-term storage and access. Guidance on request and distribution processes will be provided by ORD. Those requesting data will be asked to sign a Letter of Agreement.

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No
• product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.: No