Terrie Fox Wetle Award (2021): Advancing multidisciplinary health services science: Developments in a Dementia-Focused Program of Research

The Terrie Fox Wetle Rising Star Award in health Services and Aging Research is an award named in honor of Fox Wetle, PhD, who is internationally recognized for her contributions to aging, public health, and health care research. The award recognizes health services researchers in early or middle-career phases who have made significant contributions that embody the value of multidisciplinary health services science and are likely to have a sustained, high impact on practice and research. This aware lecture will be presented by the 2021 Award Recipient, Andrea Gilmore-Bykovskyi, PhD, RN, and will highlight emergent findings and foci in her dementia-focused health services research program. In particular, the award lecture will discuss progress in investigating social and behavioral communication patterns among individuals with moderate to advanced dementia; and the role of temporally situated observational measures and inclusion of persons with dementia and their caregivers in this line of research. The lecture will conclude with a discussion of next steps for this area of investigation surrounding assessment of episodes of lucidity in advanced dementia; and considerations for strengthening progress in outcome evaluation among persons living with dementia through multidisciplinary and community-informed health services research.

Exploring Research Engagement and Priorities of Transgender and Gender Diverse Veterans

ABSTRACT Introduction In recent years, the U.S. Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has seen an increasing population of transgender and gender diverse (TGD) veterans accessing care. Approximately 139 per 100,000 VHA users had a gender identity disorder diagnosis documented in 2018 compared to 32.9 per 100,000 in 2013. Despite TGD patients being overrepresented within VHA, TGD veterans may distrust or face unique barriers with various aspects of the VHA, including health services research. Existing VHA health research focused on TGD populations is largely limited to secondary analyses of electronic health record data. Identifying strategies to enhance primary data collection is crucial for more deeply investigating health care challenges experienced by TGD veterans using VHA care. Additionally, describing health topics of importance for TGD veterans is important for making the research agenda more patient-centered. In this study, we offer veterans’ recommendations for researchers working with underrepresented populations based on our findings. Materials and Methods From September through October 2019, 30 TGD veterans were recruited through VHA lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning Veteran Care Coordinators (LGBTQ+ VCC) located nationwide. Semi-structured interviews were used to explore barriers and facilitators to research participation, recommendations for improving outreach and engagement, and overall perspectives about priorities in health services research. Transcripts were independently and jointly reviewed and coded by two TGD research analysts, including a veteran using VHA care. Codes were derived inductively. Themes were identified using conventional content analysis. The VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System institutional review board approved this study. Results Participants cited privacy concerns of being “outed” and potentially having VHA benefits revoked, in addition to a level of distrust in researchers’ intentions as barriers to participating in studies. Facilitators for participating included feeling a sense of serving the TGD community and accessibility to study locations, especially VHA-affiliated sites. Suggestions for recruitment included tailored messaging and using other TGD peers or affirming VHA staff (e.g., LGBTQ+ VCCs) for study outreach. Mental health and gender-affirming hormone therapy were the most understudied topics identified by participants. Additionally, participants prioritized the inclusion and study of underrepresented subpopulations, such as transgender women of color, transgender men, and non-binary/gender diverse veterans, in future research. Conclusions By harnessing the VHA LGBTQ+ VCC network, this study recruited a national sample of TGD veterans to provide insight on methods for more effectively engaging TGD veterans in research and elicited their suggestions for health services research topics. The findings provide numerous suggestions for medicine and public health that are ripe for future research endeavors. Despite the study’s lack of gender, racial, and ethnic diversity, findings highlight the need for engagement and study of underrepresented veteran populations. These suggested areas of focus for research in combination with valuable insight on research participation provide researchers with guidance for developing research agendas and designing recruitment and data collection methods that can facilitate future primary research advancing health services research involving TGD patients. Similarly, VHA and non-VHA researchers conducting research involving other underrepresented populations can also gain insight from these findings.

Recruitment in Health Services Research—A Study on Facilitators and Barriers for the Recruitment of Community-Based Healthcare Providers

In health services research, the recruitment of patients is oftentimes conducted by community-based healthcare providers. Therefore, the recruitment of these healthcare providers is a crucial prerequisite for successful patient recruitment. However, recruiting community-based healthcare providers poses a major challenge and little is known about its influencing factors. This qualitative study is conducted alongside a health services research intervention trial. The aim of the study is to investigate facilitators and barriers for the recruitment of community-based healthcare providers. A qualitative text analysis of documents and semi-structured interviews with recruiting staff is performed. An inductive–deductive category-based approach is used. Our findings identify intrinsic motivation and interest in the trial’s aims and goals as important facilitating factors in healthcare provider recruitment. Beyond that, extrinsic motivation generated through financial incentives or collegial obligation emerged as a conflicting strategy. While extrinsic motivation might aid in the initial enrollment of healthcare providers, it rarely resulted in active trial participation in the long run. Therefore, extrinsic motivational factors should be handled with care when recruiting healthcare providers for health services research intervention trials.

Leveraging open data to reconstruct the Singapore Housing Index and other building-level markers of socioeconomic status for health services research

Background Socioeconomic status (SES) is an important determinant of health, and SES data is an important confounder to control for in epidemiology and health services research. Individual level SES measures are cumbersome to collect and susceptible to biases, while area level SES measures may have insufficient granularity. The ‘Singapore Housing Index’ (SHI) is a validated, building level SES measure that bridges individual and area level measures. However, determination of the SHI has previously required periodic data purchase and manual parsing. In this study, we describe a means of SHI determination for public housing buildings with open government data, and validate this against the previous SHI determination method. Methods Government open data sources (e.g. data.gov.sg, Singapore Land Authority OneMAP API, Urban Redevelopment Authority API) were queried using custom Python scripts. Data on residential public housing block address and composition from the HDB Property Information dataset (data.gov.sg) was matched to postal code and geographical coordinates via OneMAP API calls. The SHI was calculated from open data, and compared to the original SHI dataset that was curated from non-open data sources in 2018. Results Ten thousand seventy-seven unique residential buildings were identified from open data. OneMAP API calls generated valid geographical coordinates for all (100%) buildings, and valid postal code for 10,012 (99.36%) buildings. There was an overlap of 10,011 buildings between the open dataset and the original SHI dataset. Intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.999 for the two sources of SHI, indicating almost perfect agreement. A Bland-Altman plot analysis identified a small number of outliers, and this revealed 5 properties that had an incorrect SHI assigned by the original dataset. Information on recently transacted property prices was also obtained for 8599 (85.3%) of buildings. Conclusion SHI, a useful tool for health services research, can be accurately reconstructed using open datasets at no cost. This method is a convenient means for future researchers to obtain updated building-level markers of socioeconomic status for policy and research.

The German Innovation Fund (Innovationsfonds)

The Innovationsfonds was launched by the German Federal Government in 2016 and funds both experimental new care models and health services research projects. The applicants respond to annual funding announcements with a broad range of topics. Insights from more than five years of experience encompass prioritisation of topics, types of projects funded, governance pathways and potential future directions.

Musculoskeletal healthcare at a Swiss university hospital chiropractic medicine outpatient clinic in 2019: a health services research study

Background The Balgrist University Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland, is an academic hospital focused on musculoskeletal (MSK) disorders. An integrated chiropractic medicine clinic provides chiropractic care to a broad patient population. Our health services research study aims to advance understanding of chiropractic health care service for quality assurance and health care quality improvement. Methods An observational clinical cohort study at the Balgrist chiropractic medicine clinic in 2019 was performed. The records of all patients with initial visits or returning initial visits (> 3 months since last visit) and their subsequent visits from January 1, 2019 to December 31, 2019, were used to create the study dataset. Data collected included demographic characteristics, diagnoses, imaging data, conservative treatments, surgeries, and other clinical care data. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize data. Results 1844 distinct patients (52% female, mean age 48 ± 17 years) were eligible and included in the study. 1742 patients had a single initial visit, 101 had 2 initial visits, and 1 patient had 3 initial visits during the study period. The most common main diagnoses were: low back pain (41%; 95% CI, 39–43%), neck pain (21%; 19–23%), and thoracic pain (8%; 7–9%). 29% had an acute (< 4 weeks) symptom duration, 10% subacute (4 to 12 weeks), and 52% chronic (> 12 weeks). Patients had a median number of 5 chiropractic visits during their episode of care, with a median care episode duration of 28 days. Only 49% (95% CI, 47–52%) of patient records had a clinical outcome that was extractable from routine clinical practice documentation retrievable from the hospital system. Conclusion Our health services research study provides an initial understanding of the patient characteristics and MSK clinical care delivered in a Swiss outpatient hospital setting and areas for clinical data quality assurance. Deeper insights into health care services and outcomes will help to facilitate a health quality improvement initiative by identifying clinical data and health care quality gaps, and establishing overall aims and targets for improvement.