Digital Health and Health Disparities Research Lab

National Institute On Minority Health And Health Disparities

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

We published one paper and have two others accepted for publication in JMIR Research Protocols and Telemedicine & Telecare and are currently in press. We have two papers revised and resubmitted for peer review. In our published manuscript, we found that rural and low-income adults lacked access to telehealth services despite being equally willing to use telehealth as non-rural and non-low-income adults. We presented three abstracts, two at the annual meeting for the Society for Epidemiologic Research in Portland, OR, on (a) online health information seeking and COVID-19 vaccination outcomes and (b) video game and social media use and mental health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. We presented a third abstract at the annual meeting for Academy Health in Seattle, WA, on telehealth access and willingness during the COVID-19 pandemic in adults with and without chronic health conditions among a diverse sample of US adults. We have completed a survey of 5500 participants titled "Understanding disparities in digital technologies access and use during the COVID-19 pandemic." We aim to understand individual and county-level factors associated with access to and use of digital platforms, the association between the use of such digital technologies and health outcomes, and the mechanistic processes underlying these associations. For example, based on this survey, we are examining the associations between online health information seeking and COVID-19 vaccination outcomes; identifying factors associated with disparities in use of telehealth, telemedicine, and telemonitoring services; identifying correlates of patient centered communication for telehealth visits and its association with quality of healthcare; and disparities in mediators of access/use of digital technologies such as digital literacy. We have completed another survey of 3264 participants titled "Decision tradeoffs in ecological momentary assessment and wearable device uptake." We aim to determine the relative importance of several attributes of ecological momentary assessments and features of digital wearables that are important for uptake of these remote monitoring digital health tools among various subgroups. The study protocol paper has been accepted for publication in JMIR Research Protocols. We continue to recruit patients for a natural history study titled "A prospective natural history study of COVID-19 using digital wearables"(ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT04927442). We are following a cohort of 550 COVID-19 positive patients for a period of six months to evaluate the associations between physiological data collected via digital wearables and patient-reported post-acute COVID-19 sequalae. To date, we have enrolled 446 patients. Finally, we launched a multi-center trial titled "Sleep-time blood pressure and risk of chronic kidney disease progression"(Clinicaltrials.gov identifier NCT05189418), which is funded through the NIH Bench-to-Bedside award made possible by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD). We prospectively evaluate sleep-time blood pressure, using home blood pressure monitoring and ambulatory blood pressure monitoring devices. We are recruiting a cohort of 200 chronic kidney disease patients in G3b or G4 and following them for one year to examine the associations between blood pressure and kidney function. We hypothesize that sleep-time blood pressure is potentially significant and independent marker of chronic kidney disease. To date, we have recruited 121 patients.