Assessing a Stroke Home Health Aide Recovery Program (SHARP) as a Potential High Impact Strategy for Improving Functional Mobility After Stroke

Purpose and Specific Aims This is a pilot to test the Stroke Home health Aide Recovery Program (SHARP) study design elements and procedures in preparation for a larger-scale study that would assess the effectiveness of the model to improve patient outcomes. The overall purpose of SHARP and of this research pilot is to improve patients' function following a stroke. SHARP is designed to improve mobility and reduce falls in post-acute homebound stroke patients by expanding the rehabilitation team to include SHARP Home Health Aides (HHAs) specially trained as stroke "peer coaches." The coaches will provide mentorship and support to direct care generalist HHAs. The direct care HHAs will already be working with patients and families on the exercise regimen prescribed by physicians and rehabilitation therapists.

Main aims are to:

1. Test recruitment and randomization procedures
2. Examine program acceptability
3. Assess intervention protocol implementation fidelity
4. Examine patient burden, and obtain preliminary estimates of variability/reliability/correlation over time of selected outcomes

Population and Intervention Potential candidates for the SHARP coach positions are drawn from recommendations of HHA field supervisors and from additional HHA volunteers. All must have already completed the Partners in Care health coach introductory program or the equivalent. Nominated candidates will be interviewed by Research and Partners in Care staff to select up to 10 HHA's to engage in SHARP coach training. After coach preparation, rehabilitation therapists are to help identify post-stroke patients who meet the initial pilot study eligibility criteria. A VNSNY Research Assistant reaches out to patients referred by the therapists to assess their interest and eligibility, to explain the intervention and terms of participation and, once patients agree to participate, to obtain their formal consent. After consent, patients are randomized to an intervention or control arm. SHARP coaches are deployed to help with post-stroke rehabilitation care for those randomized to the intervention arm. A total of 60 patients will be recruited - 30 for the intervention arm and 30 for the usual care arm.

Potential Significance The SHARP program that is being developed through this study has the potential to be a high impact approach to enhance home-based post-stroke rehabilitation and improve functional mobility and related outcomes among homebound post-stroke patients. This project represents foundational work for the development of a novel community based approach to enhance stroke recovery. By leveraging an existing infrastructure of paraprofessional care providers (the HHAs), this program may offer a practical and sustainable method for enhancing post-acute care of stroke patients during the critical transition phase from hospital/rehab center to home, and provide a framework for a new cadre of advanced, specialty HHAs. Qualitative and quantitative data derived from this pilot will inform feasibility, study procedures and effect sizes for a larger randomized trial assessing the impact of the SHARP coaching on patient outcomes.