DeafHealth Receives $250,000 Award from Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute
DeafHealth’s project has been awarded $250,000 through the Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Award Program, an initiative of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).
The COVID-19 pandemic has sped up telehealth usage in healthcare, but best practices for the Deaf community are still unknown. Deaf individuals who use American Sign Language face communication and health literacy challenges, making virtual healthcare potentially inaccessible.
The two-year project, “Building Capacity for Deaf American Sign Language Users in Virtual Healthcare PCOR/CER” will form a national Deaf Patient Coalition. This coalition will gather diverse Deaf patient experiences with virtual healthcare to help shape future patient-centered outcomes research and comparative clinical effectiveness research focused on healthcare virtual platforms for the Deaf community. By collaborating with academic institutions, researchers, and patient communities, this groundbreaking project aims to advance equitable care and decision-making among Deaf patients.
The project is led by Allysa Dittmar, MHS, Vice President at DeafHealth, the health and patient advocacy division of Communication Service of the Deaf, Inc. Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), under the leadership of Dr. Tiffany Panko, executive director of the Deaf Health Care & Biomedical Science Hub and director of the Deaf Health Laboratory at RIT's National Technical Institute for the Deaf will support the project.
Read full press release here.
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Transcript and Video Description
[Video Description: The post has a video thumbnail with blue shading overlaid. The top middle has "DeafHealth awarded $250K from PCORI" in white text with rose background. In the video: A woman with blonde wavy hair is sitting in front of the camera with shelves, books, and decorative items behind her. She is wearing a navy blouse.
Transcript: We are thrilled to announce that we have been awarded $250,000 by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI)‘s Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Award Program. The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly increased the use of telehealth. However, little is known about deaf individuals’ experiences in telehealth. This is concerning. Deaf people comprise approximately 13% of the American population, yet they are often overlooked in research. Telemedicine may result in challenges for deaf patients in receiving appropriate accommodations, such as captioning, interpreters, and experienced providers, making healthcare services potentially inaccessible and inequitable. This funding will support our two-year project. We will recruit a diverse group of stakeholders and gather deaf patient experiences with virtual healthcare. The goal of this project is to influence future research, improve our experiences with virtual healthcare platforms, and empower our community with equitable participation and knowledge to drive community-centered change and improve health outcomes. The screen fades to show a thumbnail of a faded white background of a doctor holding hands with another individual] Deaf. Healthy. DeafHealth. Learn more at www.deafhealthaccess.org.]