Current Projects - Community Health Advocacy

Community Health Advocacy Awards Grants for Spring 2022

Nine research projects are sharing more than $650,000 in funding through the Community Health Advocacy program to generate solutions focused on the following areas:

• Exploring prototypes for the transformation of care and community-based initiatives that address social determinants of health
• Improving outcomes and reducing health care disparities
• Increasing access to care and reducing barriers to care for individuals from all racial and ethnic backgrounds
  
  

The CHA program is a partnership between OSF HealthCare and The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC).

The funding supports research involving clinicians, engineers and social scientists to rapidly develop technologies and devices that could revolutionize medical training and health care delivery. A requirement of the grant applications was for solutions that could be deployed quickly, within four to six weeks.

Spring 2022 Project Awards

Exploring Opportunities to Design and Implement Interventions to Increase Health Literacy in the African American, Medicaid Population

• Julie Traenkenschuh, Director Performance Improvement, OSF HealthCare
• Brenikki Floyd, PhD, Clinical Assistant Professor, University of Illinois Chicago
• Kevin Garcia, University of Illinois Chicago
  
  

The focus of this proposed project is to address the role of innovative health literacy (HL) interventions in health care systems settings to reduce health inequities among minority populations.

To achieve our goal, formative research will be conducted to better understand the experiences of patients and health care providers involved in HL interventions and their perceptions of effectiveness. Using this information, we aim to recommend evidence-based practices toward the development of innovative HL intervention design strategies
for health care system settings.

Telehealth to address health care disparities

• Linda Chang, PharmD, BCPS, CDE, MPH, Clinical Associate Professor, University of Illinois Chicago
• Dawn Mosher, Assistant Professor, OSF HealthCare
• Ananya Gangopadhyaya, MD, Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine, University of Illinois Chicago
• Radhika Sreedhar, MD, MS, FACPMS, Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine, University of Illinois Chicago
• Yovia Xu, PhD, Health Disparity Course Director University of Illinois Chicago
• Paul Chastain II, PhD, Clinical Associate Professor, Associate Director of Simulation Events and Development, University of Illinois Chicago
  
  

We propose an innovative interprofessional collaborative project to train a new generation of students to have expertise in telehealth care. Few studies have examined education and training programs to prepare clinicians for the broader use of telehealth practices.

We propose a three-phase community-based curriculum development and pilot testing project that enhances multi-disciplinary clinicians' telehealth competency in addressing urban health disparities to address this gap.

Analytics and Artificial Intelligence for Cardio-Oncology

• Jacob Krive, PhD, MS, MBA, Clinical Associate Professor, University of Illinois Chicago
• Chetan Bhardwaj, MD, OSF HealthCare
• Karl Kochendorfer, MD, Chief Health Information Officer, Associate Chief Medical Officer, Associate Professor of Clinical Family & Community Medicine, University of Illinois Chicago
• Ravishankar Iyer, PhD, George and Ann Fisher Distinguished Professor of Engineering, University of Illinois
• Christopher Gans, MD, Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine in the Division of Cardiology, Director of Cardio-Oncology Program, University of Illinois Chicago
• Natalie Parde, PhD, Assistant Professor, Co-Director of the Natural Language Processing Laboratory, University of Illinois Chicago
• Marianna Krive, DO, General Cardiologist, Director of Cardio-Oncology for Advocate Lutheran General Hospital and Condell Medical Center, Advocate Lutheran General Hospital and Condell Medical Center
• Sandeep Kataria, MBA, UI Cancer Center, Director of Oncology Bioinformatics, University of Illinois Chicago
• Roopa Foulger, BS, VP of Digital and Innovation Development, OSF HealthCare
• Arash Jalali, PhD, UI Cancer Center, IT & Bioinformatics Manager
  
  

Recent improvements in oncology are extending the lives of cancer patients but are also having an unforeseen impact on cardiovascular health. Cardio-oncology is a new medical subspecialty with a growing record of research and treatment of cardiotoxicities caused by oncology treatments.

We propose artificial intelligence (AI) based solution that mines clinical data to identify oncology patients who are eligible for referral to cardio-oncologists and predict their risk for cardiovascular complications, with future research implications enabling discovery of the new cardiotoxicities using real world evidence.

Does providing free education on Medicare benefits improve health outcomes in working class communities?

• Sarah Donohue, PhD, Director, University of Illinois College of Medicine Peoria
• Nathan Pritzker, MBA, Strategic Program Manager, OSF HealthCare
• Ben Shaw, PhD, MPH, Division Director in Community Health Sciences at UIC, University of Illinois Chicago
• Uchechi Mitchell, School of Public Health, Community Health Sciences, University of Illinois Chicago
  
  

2021 focus groups found that one of the main reasons Black/African American and Hispanic/LatinX populations in Peoria’s most vulnerable zip codes do not seek regular medical care is a fear of a large medical bill and not understanding what insurance may or may not cover.

It is likely that in a similar populations of Black/African American individuals living on the South Side of Chicago, the same fears and barriers are present. By empowering individuals ages 65 and older with the knowledge of what Medicare can cover, this project will help to promote the use of primary care, ultimately leading to better health outcomes.

Using a community-based approach to improve health literacy and cancer screening rates in minority populations

• Sarah Donohue, PhD, Director, University of Illinois College of Medicine Peoria
• Scott Barrows, Design Lab Lead, OSF HealthCare
• Mary E. Stapel, MD, Medical Director, Community Care and Community Clinic, Medical Director, Hospital Outpatient Departments, Assistant Program Director, Internal Medicine-Pediatrics, GRowLocal (Global Rural Local Health Equity) Track Director, OSF HealthCare
• Stephen B. Brown, MSW, LCSW, Senior Director, Social & Behavioral Health Transformation & Advocacy, Director of Preventive Emergency Medicine, University of Illinois Chicago
• Michael G. Browne, PhD, Clinical Assistant Professor, University of Illinois Chicago
  
  

The lack of a comprehensive survey tool for specific diseases, as well as the information obtained from pilot focus groups, indicates that an intervention on barriers to screening, including health literacy, is necessary.

In this proposal, we seek to obtain baseline measures on health literacy for cancer screenings and to work on interventions to improve health literacy around these topics. Our target population is Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino individuals living in the South Side of Chicago.

Pediatric Mental Health Model and Application Development in Connection with the School's Information Management System

• Ugo Buy, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Illinois Chicago
• Kyle Beorke, Director Behavioral Health Ambulatory Services, OSF HealthCare
• Sister M. Pieta Keller, Innovation Engineer, OSF HealthCare
• Mark Hallenbeck, MS, Lecturer, University of Illinois Chicago
  
  

To improve patient care and access to treatment, an adolescent mental health predictive model should be built from the data from the school’s information management system to help minimize disparities and increase access to mental health care. We are proposing the development of an algorithm based on Illinois and national research that correlates student performance changes with mental health indications.

The platform works as a bridge within the school’s information management system to identify, flag, and connect students in need to mental and emotional health resources and further health care within the OSF Ministry. A predictive model within the app would enable teachers, counselors, coaches, and parents to know who and when to focus support.

Creating Human-Centered Decision Support Archetypes for CliniPane: a “Third Paradigm” in Clinical Decision Support

• Jonathan Handler, MD, Senior Innovation Fellow, OSF HealthCare
• Kal Pasupathy, PhD, MS, Head and Professor, Biomedical and Health Information Sciences, University of Illinois Chicago
• Elizabeth Lerner Papautsky, Assistant Professor, University of Illinois Chicago
• Scott Barrows, Design Lab Lead, OSF HealthCare
• Spencer McDaniel, UI/UX Engineer, OSF HealthCare
• Roopa Foulger, BS, VP of Digital and Innovation Development, OSF HealthCare
  
  

Due to common EHR limitations, clinical decision support often provides limited benefits and may create detrimental inefficiencies, especially when caring for underserved populations for whom both clinical and social determinants of health must be addressed.

A separate effort seeks to address those limitations by creating an application analogous to a “clinical Heads-Up Display” (aka “CliniPane”) to provide a complementary form of clinical decision support. This proposal aims to design seamless, high-quality, and effective user experiences to support this “third paradigm” of decision support display.

Telerehabilitation Disparities for Patients with Limited Proficiency

• Mansha Mirza, PhD, MS, Associate Professor, University of Illinois Chicago
• Courtney Pilat, Director Digital Outpatient and Community Care, OSF HealthCare
  
  

This study will investigate disparities in outpatient telerehabilitation delivery for patients with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) as well as identify barriers to and facilitators of equitable telerehabilitation for this population. Nearly 26 million individuals in the US have LEP. This group is particularly vulnerable to telehealth challenges.

This project advances CHA’s goal of addressing health care challenges in urban settings and reducing barriers to care for individuals from all racial and ethnic backgrounds.

A text messaging based educational intervention aimed at improving outcomes in myasthenia gravis

• Pritikanta Paul, MD, Assistant Professor, University of Illinois Chicago
• Jorge Kattah, MD, OSF HealthCare
• Dr. Biswajit Maharathi, PhD, University of Illinois Chicago
• Dr. Dilip Pandey, MD, PhD, FAHA, University of Illinois Chicago
  
  

Many patients in medically underserved communities are unable to keep up due to lack of disease education and inadequate provider access. We aim to address this immediate need of improving health care access using technology with the hypothesis that text based educational messaging improves disease literacy and treatment adherence leading to better outcomes.

Through this pilot project we propose to build a bilingual text message-based intervention to systematically deliver disease specific information and reminders to MG patients to improve treatment adherence.