6 Clinical Trials for Various Conditions
A two-arm parallel randomized controlled trial will be conducted to compare the effectiveness of a phone-based household emergency preparedness intervention with a mailed informational brochure on household emergency preparedness amongst a sample of World Trade Center Health Registry enrollees residing within New York City.
Food pantries face many challenges, including recruitment and training of staff/volunteers, communications with staff/volunteers and clients, providing client choice, and emergency preparedness. The investigators will develop, implement, and evaluate the Support Application for Food Pantries (SAFPAS), a mobile application to address these concerns under normal and emergency operations, and assess its impact on 20 Baltimore food pantries, and on the healthiness of foods received by 360 food pantry clients using a randomized controlled trial design. If successful, the tested and refined app will support local food assistance programs throughout the United States.
School leaders, staff, and teachers are tasked with keeping children safe from acts of violence, natural hazards and other emergencies while encouraging learning. Disaster plans are often developed without teacher involvement, resulting in limited knowledge of emergency preparedness, undermining buy-in and limited motivation to comply with safety protocols, including disaster drills. The lack of initial consultation and limited decision-making authority can also be sources of stress for teachers. Teachers and staff may experience anxiety about their roles and responsibilities in a crisis. This research project proposes that the key to enhancing emergency preparedness in this population is to incorporate 'psychological preparedness' within a disaster management framework. In other words, to provide the school workforce with awareness of their likely psychological response to threat and coping skills/strategies for management of that response. Importantly, workforce-focused mental health integrated approaches to emergency preparedness are likely to work best if implemented via peer support and shared leadership frameworks. This project involves adaptation and implementation of an integrated workforce mental health intervention into Pre-K-12 school emergency preparedness via shared leadership and peer support. This includes co-creating training curriculum with Pre-K-12 schools, labor organizations, and district officials, implementing and evaluating the impact of the intervention. A matched waitlist control comparison research design will be used with six Pre-K-12 schools. The hypothesized outcomes of the intervention are increases in H1: emergency preparedness climate; emergency preparedness specific H2: shared leadership; H3: peer support and social cohesion; H4: confidence (in emergency preparedness); and H5: psychological preparedness. The project also anticipates H6: increases in overall mental health and well-being, and H7: a reduction in emergency preparedness-specific burnout.
Individuals with dementia and their families are especially vulnerable during a disaster as it limits caregivers' ability to continue with care due to disaster related stress and reduced access to resources and support. The COVID-19 pandemic showed the extreme vulnerability of persons with dementia (PWD) and their caregivers as they struggled to access support and resources due to the threat of COVID-19 infection; such impact was exacerbated in rural areas where caregivers are geographically isolated and disaster management resources are scarce. With the number of federally declared disasters increasing dramatically over the past 50 years, active public health efforts are needed to support caregivers in developing emergency caregiving plans usable in disasters such as pandemics and extreme weather emergencies. The long-term goal of this project is to enhance emergency preparedness and support networks of caregivers of PWD to increase their resilience and minimize distress by implementing an intervention program, Disaster PrepWise (DPW). In the DPW program, a trained Medical Reserve Corp (MRC) volunteer will provide step-by-step guidance to caregivers to jointly develop emergency preparedness plans and personal support networks. The objectives of this proposed study are to 1) test the impact of DPW on caregiver outcomes (i.e., resilience, stress) and perceptions that may mediate the association between DPW and outcomes (caregiver self-efficacy, preparedness, social support); and 2) evaluate implementation strategies in a real-world setting to optimize future dissemination. We will conduct a randomized control trial of 250 caregivers of persons with dementia involving two arms: DPW intervention group and an information-only control group (print information on disaster preparedness). Assessments will occur before randomization (baseline), and 3 and 6 months after the baseline. This study is innovative in its use of a highly personalized disaster preparedness program with built-in assistance to support caregivers; the support will be provided through an existing national-level public health infrastructure (MRC) that has a great potential to reach older adults and caregivers in rural areas. The knowledge and data obtained through this study will lay the foundation for a future larger-scale multi-state pragmatic trial to assess dissemination potentials.
Nurses Taking on Readiness Measures (N-TORM) is an innovative nurse-driven household emergency preparedness intervention modeled after an existing community intervention provided by emergency management personnel. The proposed pilot studies will test the Korean translation of the Household Emergency Preparedness Instrument (K-HEPI) and describe the implementation and effectiveness of N-TORM in a community setting. The aims of this instrument translation study and cluster randomized controlled trial are to (a) field and pilot test the K-HEPI in order to perform psychometric testing on the instrument and generate reliability and validity data, (b) increase the accessibility of N-TORM to vulnerable populations, (c) evaluate the effectiveness of N-TORM to increase household emergency preparedness knowledge and behavior, (d) implement N-TORM in a community located in an area at increased risk for disasters, measuring consistency of delivery, time, and cost of N-TORM, and (e) describe the factors most necessary to maintain and expand N-TORM.
Nurses Taking On Readiness Measures (N-TORM) is an innovative nurse-driven household emergency preparedness (HEP) intervention modeled after an existing community intervention provided by emergency management personnel. This phase I feasibility pilot study will describe the implementation and effectiveness of N-TORM in the community setting, but provided by nurses. The aims of this implementation study are to: (a) increase the reach of N-TORM to vulnerable populations; (b) evaluate the effectiveness of N-TORM for increasing HEP knowledge and behavior; (c) implement N-TORM in a community located in an area at increased risk for disasters, measuring consistency of delivery, time, and cost of N-TORM; (d) describe the factors necessary to maintain and expand N-TORM, and; (e) pilot test a new HEP instrument in order to perform psychometric testing on the instrument and generate reliability and validity data.