Trusted Messenger Intervention

Dartmouth Health

Status: Terminated

Conditions: Vaccine Hesitancy

Treatments: Behavioral: Trusted Messenger

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05167422

02001055

Details and patient eligibility

About

The objective of this pilot study is to develop and evaluate test a trusted messenger intervention targeting vaccine hesitancy in patients on an inpatient psychiatric hospital setting with both acute and chronic patients.

Enrollment: 2 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Able and willing to give verbal informed consent to participate in the study or able to assent with guardian consent
• Expected to remain in the hospital for the duration of the study
• Mental health diagnosis Demographics
• Male, female, or transgender (no exclusion criteria based on gender or sexual orientation)
• Ages 18 or older
• Any race or ethnicity
• English speaking

Exclusion criteria

• Cognitive impairment sufficient to interfere with participant's ability to provide assent
• People who are non-English speakers or who have major visual or hearing impairment will be excluded given the need to converse with the Trusted Messenger verbally
• People who have received any of the available forms of the COVID-19 vaccine, or those with a medical exemption for receiving the vaccine.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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2 participants in 2 patient groups

Trusted Messenger

Experimental group

Description:

The trusted messenger patient intervention will involve training a small number of staff "trusted messengers" to engage patients informally and assist with building vaccine confidence in brief one- on-one sessions, supported by trusted messengers weekly consultations with a content expert who can answer specific vaccine related questions that patients have over a 3-week period. Trusted messengers will be full time unit employees, selected with the assistance of the nursing supervisor for having excellent rapport with patients (assessed with the Nurse Coordinator Questionnaire) and for having been vaccinated. Mental health workers or nurses may serve in this role. Both inpatient units involved in this study will be grouped into the same vaccination cohort within the hospital, to provide patients in the intervention and the wait list similar opportunities to be vaccinated.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Trusted Messenger

Standard Care

No Intervention group

Description:

After a 3-week study period, up to 24 patients on the second unit will receive the trusted messenger intervention and followed for a period of 3 weeks. The trusted messenger intervention will consist of staff who are trained to engage patients informally and assist building social norms for vaccine uptake supported by weekly and as-needed check-ins with a content expert who can answer specific vaccine related questions over a 3 week period.