Assessing CHaRT's Effectiveness and Barriers and Facilitators of Its Implementation

University of Washington

Status: Not yet enrolling

Conditions: Disasters; Heat; Disaster Management; Heat Health; Extreme Heat; Disaster Planning; Extreme Heat Waves; Emergency Preparedness

Treatments: Other: CHaRT: Online decision support platform to support evidence-based heat health risk assessment and extreme heat event preparedness planning; Other: Heat and health risk assessment and preparedness information

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; NIH

Identifiers

NCT06971978

STUDY00020944

1P20ES036748-01 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Details and patient eligibility

About

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn if an innovative online decision support tool (CHaRT) that provides localized health risk assessment for extreme heat at the census tract level helps local health departments plan and prepare for extreme heat by identifying risk drivers in their jurisdictions, highlighting interventions that are effective for their jurisdiction's risk profile, and providing information regarding intervention implementation. This trial will evaluate barriers and facilitators of the tool's implementation. The main questions it aims to answer are:

1. Does a health department using the tool have better reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, and maintenance of heat-health activities compared with an information-only control?
2. What are the barriers and facilitators of CHaRT's implementation?

Researchers will compare health departments using CHaRT to health departments using provided heat-health information only.

Enrollment: 30 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Local (city or county) health department
• Local (i.e., city or county) health department with at least partial autonomy to pursue the development and implementation of heat-health activities (i.e., not a state where all public health activities are administered at a state level)
• Availability of a staff member to participate in all elements of the trial. Local health department staff responsible for planning and implementing programming to protect constituents from extreme heat.
• Adults whose demographics and health status will mirror those of the general population.
• Current employees of included health departments aged 18 or greater

Exclusion criteria

• Being in a state where public health activities are exclusively managed at a state level and not having staff availability to participate
• Children and prisoners

Trial design

Primary purpose: Other

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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30 participants in 2 patient groups

Intervention group

Experimental group

Description:

The intervention group will receive facilitated engagement with CHaRT. CHaRT is an online decision support platform designed to support evidence-based climate change adaptation. CHaRT has a risk assessment platform that provides estimates of heat-health risks at a census tract level under various hazard conditions. It also has a decision support platform that links drivers of risk in a given location with information about potential risk reduction activities and includes information useful to policymakers regarding intervention efficacy, timing, and cost. Facilitated engagement includes an initial introduction to the platform, real-time questions and answers, and focused discussion regarding priority interventions and planning and implementation needs. This engagement comprises about five hours of time that can be provided over the course of a couple weeks or several months, depending on the needs of the health department.

Treatment:

Other: CHaRT: Online decision support platform to support evidence-based heat health risk assessment and extreme heat event preparedness planning

Control group

Active Comparator group

Description:

Study participants in the control group will be provided with a package of information supportive of heat-health vulnerability and risk assessment and planning for risk reduction activities through built environment hazard mitigation and public health programming. This package will include an annotated list of online resources, including those available on Heat.gov and the CDC website, and a selected set of review papers on heat-health vulnerability, heat-health risk assessment, heat hazard mitigation through built environment strategies, and heat action planning and preparedness.

Treatment:

Other: Heat and health risk assessment and preparedness information