Building on Existing Tools To Improve Chronic Disease Prevention and Screening in Primary Care Virtually: the Virtual BETTER Study

While the current pandemic has launched a likely irreversible transition towards increased utilization of virtual methods for delivery of healthcare, we have only a very superficial understanding of how this shift will affect health outcomes and equity of access to health services. Several randomized trials comparing virtual to in-person delivery of health services have been completed, but none have examined the effect of interventions to address health behaviours, arguably one of the most challenging issues in healthcare and one that is most sensitive to the therapeutic relationship and modifiers to that relationship such as the mode of communication. The focus of this project is to examine how delivering virtual care impacts health behaviour change for patients with chronic illnesses compared to in-person visits using a chronic disease prevention and screening (CDPS) program called BETTER (Building on Existing Tools To ImprovE Chronic Disease PRevention and Screening in Primary Care).