Assessing the Effect of Virtual Navigation Interventions to Improve Health Insurance Literacy and Decrease Financial Burden: A Childhood Cancer Survivor Study Randomized Trial (HINTII)

The present study seeks to evaluate a health insurance navigation program with childhood cancer survivors recruited from the Long-Term Follow-Up (LTFU) Cohort. Childhood cancer survivors face health challenges throughout their lives that require monitoring and ongoing care. This is compounded by the tendency among childhood survivors to have higher rates of underinsurance, unmet healthcare needs, and burdensome costs related to care. These burdensome costs also contribute to underutilization of care among survivors. Dr. Park and her colleagues published findings that suggested LTFU survivors had difficulty in understanding how to use their insurance, and often experienced financial-related distress. Understanding and navigating insurance benefits in the current landscape is crucial for cancer survivors to obtain and utilize the health care that they need. With this in mind, the study investigators propose to evaluate the effectiveness of an insurance navigation intervention with LTFU participants, delivered in a synchronous and asynchronous modality.

The navigation intervention will be delivered by a health insurance navigator via HIPAA-compliant videoconferencing for the synchronous group (HINT-S) and will be delivered via pre-recorded video session for the asynchronous group HINT-A). Participants will be randomized into either the two navigation intervention arms (HINT-S and HINT-A; approximately 234 per intervention arm), or the enhanced usual care arm (approximately 52 for control arm). The sample size per arm was chosen to enable evaluation of feasibility and acceptability goals, as well as to explore meaningful differences in the outcomes. To assess the proposed primary and secondary outcomes, all trial participants will complete a baseline and 6-month and 12-month post-program follow-up survey.