- Health TAPESTRY Pragmatic RCT for Older Adults, Hamilton, Ontario – This pragmatic randomized controlled trial (RCT) explored the Health TAPESTRY approach with adults over the age of 70. This included implementing and testing all four parts of Health TAPESTRY (interprofessional health care teams, volunteers, technology, and community engagement) and looking at each part’s role in impacting optimal aging.
- Learn about the protocol here
- Read the results published in CMAJ
- View the results infographic
- Hear about the results in this video
*Three sub-studies helped develop the approach. Multiple further sub-studies explored different areas related to, or affected by, the Health TAPESTRY approach. Find details about all of these sub-studies here.
- AccessHealth, Montréal, Québec – This project took the Health TAPESTRY approach and focused on South Asian and Middle Eastern newcomers to Canada living with chronic illness. It added to e-learning aspects of the volunteer training program and developed multilingual health education tools and resources.
- Enhanced & Integrated Pathways to Wellness Program, Sturgeon Lake First Nation, Saskatchewan – This project worked with an entire First Nation community (reaching 267 of 268 households) to discuss what matters most to them about the health of their community and integrating Western and Indigenous approaches to health. Initially intended to focus on diabetes, the results of the community survey led to a broader focus on chronic disease management, including lifestyle issues.
- Healthy Aging Group Education Series (Healthy AGES), Hamilton, Ontario – In the Health TAPESTRY Pragmatic RCT for Older Adults, some specific health need and goal areas were most commonly identified by clients. These included physical activity, nutrition, and advanced care planning. The Healthy Aging Group Education Series was developed by the clinical and research team in Hamilton as a four-session group education-based intervention to address these areas.
- Health-Related Outcome Measures, Hamilton, Ontario and beyond – This project brought together experts in research and evaluation (using the Delphi method) to identify the core criteria for a health-related outcome measure used in primary care.
- Health TAPESTRY-HC-DM (Health Connectors for Diabetes Management), Hamilton, Ontario – This pilot RCT used the Health TAPESTRY approach with clients with diabetes and hypertension to improve self-management of their chronic conditions. In the study, volunteer “Health Connectors” reached out to clients weekly for four months to provide motivation, educational materials, and connections to relevant community resources. On the online “Healthy Lifestyle App,” clients could both provide health information to their health care team and learn more about their own health.
- There were two developmental sub-studies that contributed to the program, which you can find details about here.
- Home Visits to Vancouver’s Elders (Home-ViVE) with Health TAPESTRY, Vancouver, BC – This project used the Health TAPESTRY approach to focus on housebound frail elderly and their goals of care, with the client’s caregivers taking the place of the “volunteer.” The project worked to integrate eHealth technologies into the care pathway to improve communication between clients, caregivers, and health care providers.
- Community Ward project, KW4 Health Link, Kitchener-Waterloo-Wellesley-Wilmot-Woolwich, Ontario – This existing project traditionally used paper-based mental health screening surveys in the home. During the TAP collaboration, they sought to streamline the data collection process through electronic data collection on the TAP-App. As in other Health TAPESTRY projects, the results were summarized into a report and uploaded into the patients’ electronic medical records.
- Health TAPESTRY with BETTER Prevention Services (TAP-BPS), Alberta and Newfoundland & Labrador – This is an intervention for 40- to 65-year-olds living with chronic illness, in which Prevention Practitioners visit them in their homes. This project integrated eHealth technologies, such as the custom-designed BETTER App and kindredPHR. The study aimed to streamline communication channels to improve chronic disease screening and prevention.
- Targeting, Referring, Intervening to Promote Healthy Aging (TRIAGE), Hamilton, Ontario – Working with a subset of clients in the Health TAPESTRY Pragmatic RCT for Older Adults who were considered “pre-frail” based on their answers to Health TAPESTRY surveys, this intervention sought to reduce frailty in older adults through a multi-method approach. This included components of nutrition, physical activity, medication management, and psychosocial support.
- Team Approach to Polypharmacy Evaluation and Reduction (TAPER), Hamilton, Ontario – Using a subset of clients in the Health TAPESTRY Pragmatic RCT for Older Adults who were taking five or more medications, this project tested a process to identify and reduce the negative effects associated with taking multiple medications in older adults by using specialized knowledge of the associated clinic’s pharmacy team and a piece of purpose-built eHealth technology.
- Usability of EU-GENIE, Hamilton, Ontario – This study worked with high users of the health care system to test the usability of EU-GENIE, an online social network analysis and community-resource-mapping tool that was originally developed in the UK. This tool was adapted with local resources from Information Hamilton, and is now known locally as GENIE.