Health Disparities

This study tests the feasibility and acceptability of Waning Moon, a culturally tailored menopause health intervention developed in partnership with the Urban Indian Center of Salt Lake (UICSL) for American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) women. Waning Moon is a 4-session integrative medical group visit program delivered by community health workers and prescribing providers. It covers menopause education, complementary health approaches, and community support. Thirty midlife AI/AN women will participate. The study will assess whether the program is feasible to deliver and acceptable to participants and clinical partners.

Breastfeeding provides well-established and "irreplaceable" health benefits for both mothers and infants. However, breastfeeding rates in France remain among the lowest in Europe and are strongly associated with socioeconomic status. Mothers experiencing severe socioeconomic deprivation, including those facing housing instability or migration-related challenges, may encounter additional barriers to breastfeeding, such as social isolation, limited access to health information, and linguistic or cultural obstacles. Peer and community support have been shown to positively influence breastfeeding initiation and continuation. The Relais Allaitement Program (PRALL) is a peer-support program designed to promote breastfeeding and support early parenting through trained volunteer mothers. The PARTAGE project aims to adapt and pilot the PRALL program for mothers experiencing severe socioeconomic deprivation receiving care at the maternity unit of the Hôpital Femme Mère Enfant (HFME), in Bron, France. This prospective, interventional, non-comparative feasibility study will evaluate the acceptability and feasibility of a peer-support breastfeeding program delivered by trained experienced mothers (peer supporters). The intervention includes: * the adaptation of PRALL educational materials and training to the needs of vulnerable populations using participatory approaches and accessible communication principles, * the recruitment and training of two nursery nurses from the maternity unit to become network coordinators of the peer-support network, * the recruitment of experienced mothers who will be trained by the 2 network coordinators, to become breastfeeding peer supporters, * and the implementation of breastfeeding support by peer supporters for eligible mothers. Eligible mothers experiencing severe socioeconomic deprivation will be offered support from a trained peer supporter during the postpartum period. The primary outcome is the number of completed support interventions, defined as to have at least two in-person mother/peer supporter contacts and to last at least one month, unless breastfeeding cessation or infant death occurs earlier. Qualitative interviews with participating mothers and peer supporters will also be conducted to explore barriers and facilitators to breastfeeding support in this population. The results will inform the adaptation of the PRALL program for vulnerable populations and assess the feasibility of implementing a peer-support breastfeeding intervention in this context. Findings may guide the development of a larger multicenter study to evaluate the impact of peer-support programs on breastfeeding outcomes among socially disadvantaged populations in France and potentially across Europe.

Hospitals ineffectively examine the safety of their processes by relying on voluntary incident reporting (VIR) by clinical staff who are overworked and afraid to report. VIR captures only 1-10% of events, excludes patients and families, and underdetects events in vulnerable groups like patients with language barriers. Patients and families are vigilant partners in care who are adept at identifying errors and AEs. Failing to actively include patients and families in safety reporting and instead relying on flawed VIR presents an important missed opportunity to improve safety. To improve hospital safety, there is a critical need to coproduce (create in partnership with families) effective systems to identify uncaptured errors. Without this information, hospitals are impeded in their ability to improve patient safety. In partnership with diverse families, nurses, physicians, and hospital leaders, investigators created a multicomponent communication intervention to engage families of hospitalized children in safety reporting. The intervention includes 3 elements: (1) a multilingual mobile (email, text, and QR-code) reporting tool prompting families to share concerns and suggestions about safety, (2) family/staff education, and (3) a process for sharing family reports with the unit and hospital so systemic issues can be addressed.

More than a dozen states have proposed or plan to implement work requirements in Medicaid, and similar requirements already exist nationally in the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), yet evidence on the effects of these policies is limited. In cooperation with the state of Virginia, the investigators plan to conduct a randomized controlled trial studying the impacts of work requirements in public programs on insurance coverage, SNAP participation, employment, and health, with a particular focus on changes in racial/ethnic and geographic disparities in these outcomes. The COVID-19 epidemic and concurrent economic downturn creates additional urgency around these issues, and the investigators will use a combination of national administrative data and a new population survey to assess disparities in employment, health care, and food insecurity during this crisis.

The purpose of this research is to develop a culturally adapted "Faith in Action!" curriculum to train lay health navigators to provide breast cancer screening navigation to Korean American women within faith-based settings and evaluate whether the culturally adapted "Faith in Action!" curriculum increases adherence to breast cancer screening guidelines among Korean American women within faith-based settings in Los Angeles, California. The primary research procedures include trainings and key informant interviews with lay health navigators in faith-based settings followed by a cluster randomized trial to evaluate the intervention.