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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Margarita Alegria, PhD¹, Antonio Polo, PhD², Sharon-Lise Normand, PhD³, Shan Gao, MS², Sarah Train², and Dan Rothstein, EdD⁴. (1) Psychiatry--Center for Multicultural MH Research, Harvard Medical School, 120 Beacon St., Somerville, MA 02143, 6172661569, malegria@charesearch.org, (2) Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research, Cambridge Health Alliance, 120 Beacon St., Somerville, MA 02143, (3) Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, 180 Longwood Ave., Boston, MA 02115, (4) The Right Question Project, Inc., 2464 Massachusetts Avenue, Suite 314, Cambridge, MA 02140

Research has demonstrated positive outcomes for patients who take an active role in their mental health care. Patients who participate in the decision making process are more satisfied with services, have a greater sense of self-efficacy and more likely to achieve their treatment goals. Here we present the results evaluating the RQP intervention to increase patient activation and empowerment in mental health care. RQP teaches clients to identify important issues, formulate questions, and devise plans to communicate and act in effective ways that address factors impacting their care.

We used a pre-post test design with two groups of patients from two clinics that serve primarily Latino patients to evaluate the RQP intervention. One hundred and five patients at clinic A served as the “intervention” group receiving the training modules and being interviewed at baseline and three additional times about their experience in care. Eighty-five patients at clinic B served as the “comparison” group, being interviewed at baseline and again eight weeks later without receiving the training. The main outcomes assessed were changes in patient activation and empowerment and engagement and retention in treatment. Our results demonstrate significant changes in patient empowerment and activation between the intervention and comparison groups. Our findings indicate that the RQP intervention can teach skills that will enable patients to better elicit information from their providers about their condition, their treatment options, medication side effects, duration of treatment and management of condition. We discuss the potential of this intervention to reduce service disparities with minority patients.

Learning Objectives:

• • Illustrate the design and methods used to evaluate a patient activation and empowerment intervention.
• • Demonstrate the quantitative results of the evaluation of the RQP intervention.
• • Identify for which minority patients the intervention works as well as those for whom there is no evidence of an intervention effect.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No