Evaluation of a community paramedicine health promotion and lifestyle risk assessment program for older adults who live in social housing: a cluster randomized trial.

Evaluation of a community paramedicine health promotion and lifestyle risk assessment program for older adults who live in social housing: a cluster randomized trial. CMAJ. 2018 May 28;190(21):E638-E647 Authors: Agarwal G, Angeles R, Pirrie M, McLeod B, Marzanek F, Parascandalo J, Thabane L Abstract BACKGROUND: Low-income older adults who live in subsidized housing have higher mortality and morbidity. We aimed to determine if a community paramedicine program - in which paramedics provide health care services outside of the traditional emergency response - reduced the number of ambulance calls to subsidized housing for older adults. METHODS: We conducted an open-label pragmatic cluster-randomized controlled trial (RCT) with parallel intervention and control groups in subsidized apartment buildings for older adults. We selected 6 buildings using predefined criteria, which we then randomly assigned to intervention (Community Paramedicine at Clinic [CP@clinic] for 1 yr) or control (usual health care) using computer-generated paired randomization. CP@clinic is a paramedic-led, community-based health promotion program to prevent diabetes, cardiovascular disease and falls for residents 55 years of age and older. The primary outcome was building-level mean monthly ambulance calls. Secondary outcomes were individual-level changes in blood pressure, health behaviours and risk of diabetes assessed using the Canadian Diabetes Risk Questi...
Source: cmaj - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: CMAJ Source Type: research