Recruiting

Social Isolation

Sponsor:

Mount Sinai Hospital, Canada

Code:

NCT05228782

Conditions

Social Isolation

Loneliness

Geriatric

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 70+

Healthy Volunteers: Accepted

Interventions

HOW R U? Intervention

Study Details

Brief summary:

Social isolation and loneliness worsen older peoples' quality of life, risk of dementia, and contributes to 45,000 deaths/year in Canada - as much as smoking. Isolated people use the health care system more often, but have worse outcomes. Effective, inexpensive interventions exist but unfortunately they have not been implemented in Canada.

We partnered with the Australian developer of HOW R U?, an effective and feasible intervention that uses specially trained, older, hospital volunteers to provide peer support to combat isolation and loneliness in isolated older peers.

Little is known about older people's preferences for virtual care (telephone vs. video) nor their relative effectiveness. Thus we will compare two ways of delivering HOW R U: telephone support and a tested, secure user-friendly video conferencing app, aTouch Away® to a common control arm.

We also partnered with Emergency Medicine, Family Medicine, Geriatrics and Psychiatry to identify people who will benefit from peer support; and with Volunteer Services to recruit volunteers.

Conditions

Social Isolation

Loneliness

Geriatric

Study ID

NCT05228782

Start date

Nov 1, 2021

Status verified date

Sep, 2021

Completion date

Nov 3, 2023

Anticipated

Primary completion date

Nov 1, 2022

Anticipated

Eligibility Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 70+

Healthy Volunteers: Accepted

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Any community-dwelling person 70 years of age and older receiving care from the ED, Family Medicine, or Geriatric clinics at our two participating sites (MSH and NYGH) will be eligible.

Exclusion Criteria:

  • age less than 70 years; communication problems (critically ill, unconscious, language barrier, speech impairment or otherwise unable to provide consent), or admission to a hospital for > 72 hours. Patients with severe cognitive impairment or those living in nursing homes who are dependent on others for their activity of daily living will be excluded. To target the intervention for older people with loneliness a baseline de Jonge loneliness scores of 2.0 will be required for participation in the trial.

Study Design

Enrollment

141 participants

Anticipated

Allocation

Randomized

Intervention Model

Parallel Assignment

Primary purpose

Supportive Care

Interventions and Outcome Measures

Arms

experimental: HOW RU Intervention delivered by telephone

Group Phone will receive the HOW RU? intervention over the telephone.

experimental: HOW RU Intervention delivered by video-call

Group Video will receive the HOW RU? intervention delivered over video-call using the aTouch Away platform.

no intervention: Wait-list Control Group

Control groups will be offered standard care through their referring service (i.e. their routine clinical follow-up). The control group will be offered HOW RU? telephone support outside of the main trial after their primary outcome assessment at 12 weeks

Interventions

HOW R U? Intervention

HOW RU? intervention uses trained volunteer peers to provide strength-based support sessions weekly for 12 weeks.

Primary outcome measure

  • Change in De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale at Baseline [ Time Frame: This scale will be collected at baseline and at 12 weeks. ]

Central Contacts and Locations

Central contacts

Jacques Lee, MD

4168771447Jacques.lee@sinaihealth.ca

Joanna Yeung, HBSc

6473089440Joanna.yeung@sinaihealth.ca

Locations

Mount Sinai Hospital

Recruiting

Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5G 1XS

Contacts

Jacques Lee, MD

Jacques.lee@sinaihealth.ca

More Information

Sponsor

Mount Sinai Hospital, Canada

Last update posted

Feb 8, 2022

Last verified

Sep, 2021

Keywords

  • Loneliness
  • Social Isolation
  • Emergency Department
  • Geriatrics
  • Geriatric Psychiatry
  • Family Medicine
  • Randomized Clinical Trial

Trial information was received from ClinicalTrials.gov and was last updated on 2026-09-10. This information was provided to ClinicalTrials.gov by Mount Sinai Hospital, Canada on 2022-02-08.