Wvu Lands $2.7m For Its Goal Of Increasing Access To Care In The Home

West Virginia University (WVU) wants to increase access to care in rural communities through nurse-led intervention, and it recently received $2.7 million to do so.

Last month, WVU announced that it was awarded $2.7 million from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Nursing Research. The funds will go towards WVU’s bundled intervention which focuses on training family caregivers on how to care for their loved ones who are living with end-stage heart failure.

“It involves making home visits, follow up phone calls, education on symptom management and using resources in the community,” Stephanie Young, clinical assistant professor at WVU School of Nursing, told Home Health Care News. “We’ll also be talking about advanced directives, what they are, who should have them, things like that. We’ll also be addressing caregiver burden. The ultimate goal is to improve symptom management and quality of life in rural parts of the state and to encourage folks to use resources available to them.”

In general, individuals living in rural communities often have more trouble accessing health care services compared to people living in urban communities, which leads to worse health outcomes.

“Across Appalachia, we see pockets of isolation, especially in the southern most part of the state of West Virginia … due to transportation, isolation and limited funding, people really have a hard time getting out of those communities to see specialists or primary care providers,” Angel Smothers, associate dean of community engagement and clinical associate professor at WVU School of Nursing, told HHCN.

WVU addresses these challenges head on, according to Smothers.

“Unfortunately, across the state of West Virginia, we have some of the worst health related outcomes in the nation, and near the top of that list is heart failure,” she said. “Our study really is designed to target a very common and, unfortunately, really debilitating chronic illness here in West Virginia.”

Another element of the study is WVU engaging with the community through health care professionals that are part of it.

“We know that [within] the Appalachian culture, there is fear of outsiders, and because of that, our nurse interventionists are faith community nurses who are from those communities,” Smothers said. We’re using an insider perspective to help us to implement the project.”

Ultimately, WVU’s goal is to improve quality of life for individuals living in this area.

Looking ahead, WVU also has its sights set on tackling other health conditions and chronic illnesses.

“We’re hoping to really pave the way for this process to work with other medical conditions beyond heart failure,” Smothers said. “Here in West Virginia, we see a lot of strokes, we see a lot of COPD, that’s just to name a couple, and again, we lead the nation in the bad health related outcomes. Another goal is that we take what we learn, and what we accomplish with this randomized control trial, and be able to utilize a method like this with other health care-related conditions.”

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