Prepared Parents Helping Kids

Prepared Parents Helping Kids: Teaching Health Care Navigation for Bhutanese Parents

Learning to navigate the US health system is challenging for many new immigrants. This pilot study will determine whether an intervention to teach parents key skills needed to access health care for children is feasible and acceptable to immigrant parents.

This study will also look for evidence of efficacy to inform the planning process for future, larger evaluations of the intervention (i.e., estimate effect sizes).

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Immigrant Caregiver Health Care Navigation for Children
• Intervention / Treatment: Other: Group-based educational intervention

Detailed Description

Parents-particularly those with limited English proficiency (LEP) and limited literacy-may require months or years of experiential learning to master fundamental health care navigation tasks, such as requesting an interpreter. Most programs teaching health care navigation skills are ad hoc and have not be evaluated.

In this study, Investigators will pilot a group-based educational intervention in which a bilingual community health worker will use an interactive curriculum to teach immigrant parents key skills needed to access health care for children.

Parents and caregivers for children <18 years will be enrolled in closed groups of 6-12 individuals. The 6-12 week intervention will comprise 6 meetings, each of which will be no longer than 75 minutes. Each meeting will focus on one of six skills:

1. Requesting an interpreter;
2. Communicating with a health care facility by telephone;
3. Scheduling appointments;
4. Traveling to health care facilities and registering with the front desk;
5. Obtaining appointments with specialists;
6. Calling 911 for an ambulance.

Each meeting will follow a pre-specified plan that will typically include welcoming activities, a review of prior material, introduction of new material, and a series of activities (e.g., role play) to practice key skills. Sessions will be interactive, culturally-appropriate, and held in parents' preferred language.

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

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Pennsylvania
    • Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, 19148
      • Bhutanese American Organization - Philadelphia

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

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

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Adult age 18 years or older
• Parent of a child <18 years
• Nepali-speaking
• Resident of the US for <10 years

Exclusion Criteria:

• Scheduled to move away from the study location (e.g., to another city) before the end of the 6-session intervention

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Other
• 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: Healthcare navigation workshops; All enrolled caregivers and parents will partake in the group-based educational intervention.

Other: Group-based educational intervention; The group-based educational intervention will use a bilingual Community Health Worker (CHW) who will teach parents key skills needed to access health care for children. Parents will be invited to attend 6 small, closed-group sessions held over 12 weeks and lasting no more than 75 minutes. Sessions will be interactive, culturally-appropriate, and held in parents' preferred language.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Number of subjects enrolling in study and completing study visits	Enrollment of the target sample and completion of the planned study visits by participants	9 months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Change in retainment of health care navigation skills from baseline	Change in Health Care Navigation Inventory (HCNI) Skills Subscale scores from baseline to post-intervention study visits. Scores can range from 12 to 60, with higher scores indicating better outcomes.	9 months

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
• Collaborators: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Katherine Yun, MD MHS, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): December 17, 2018
• Primary Completion (Actual): September 1, 2022
• Study Completion (Actual): September 1, 2022

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: October 23, 2018
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: October 23, 2018
• First Posted (Actual): October 25, 2018

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Estimate): January 10, 2023
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: January 6, 2023
• Last Verified: January 1, 2023

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Refugee Health; Immigrant Health; Health care navigation
• Other Study ID Numbers: 18-015474; 1K23HD082312-01A1 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: No

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No