RTEC Year 5 Projects

The following projects have been initiated for 2024-2025:

Project #1: Access to Telehealth in substance use treatment facilities: A multilevel analysis of facility location, surrounding neighborhood characteristics, and state behavioral health funding
Principal Investigator: George Pro, PhD
Project funded: September 2024
Anticipated completion date: August 2025

Project description: Place matters, such that where a person lives, their neighborhood characteristics, and local health policy drive access to behavioral healthcare and innovative treatment modalities such as telehealth. The proposed study will use a new national dataset to identify the location of all known outpatient substance use disorder treatment facilities and measure the impact of multiple population and policy-related factors at the neighborhood, county, and state levels on telehealth availability.

Project #2: Health equity in virtual prenatal care
Principal Investigators: Cari A. Bogulski, PhD and Don E. Willis, PhD
Project funded: September 2024
Anticipated completion date: August 2025

Project description: Adequate prenatal care is critical for supporting maternal health. Access to adequate prenatal care is associated with certain social determinants of health and stressful life events. Virtual prenatal care has the potential to improve access and reduce some of the barriers to care; however, much remains unknown regarding the social determinants and stressful life events which might also shape disparate receipt of virtual prenatal care. This project aims to investigate the association between stressful life events, other social determinants of health, and receipt of virtual prenatal care using data from the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System.

Project #3: Assessing the Impact of Socioeconomic Disparities on Telehealth Utilization in Rural United States Communities: Insights from National Data
Principal Investigators: Corneliu Bolbocean, PhD, Cari A. Bogulski, PhD, and Corey Hayes, PhD
Project funded: September 2024
Anticipated completion date: August 2025

Project description: This study aims to uncover the drivers behind telehealth disparities and to provide insights that could inform equitable healthcare policy and interventions. This project investigates disparities in telehealth utilization across different socioeconomic strata, focusing on rural US areas. Employing health concentration indices, the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition and machine learning methods, we assess how race, sex, age, and socioeconomic status influence telehealth use. Using data from the Health Information National Trends Survey and the Epic Systems Corporation’s database, we apply random forest and causal forest algorithms to pinpoint factors affecting telehealth use and to estimate the variability in health outcomes.

Project #4: Documentation of Social Determinants of Health Diagnosis Codes in Telehealth Visits and its relationship with social support visits among pregnant people (2019-2024)
Principal Investigator: Mahip Acharya, PhD
Project funded: September 2024
Anticipated completion date: August 2025

Project description: This project will characterize the trends in social determinants of health diagnosis codes in virtual visits and will also estimate the relationship between a virtual visit and the likelihood of social support visits, among pregnant people. We will conduct a retrospective time-series analysis and a cohort study using Epic Cosmos database (2019–2024), a longitudinal integrated database of electronic medical records across Epic Cosmos institutions.

Project #5: Evaluation of the Telehealth Technology Enabled Learning Program
Principal Investigators: Katy Allison, PhD and Cari A. Bogulski, PhD
Project funded: September 2024
Anticipated completion date: August 2025

Project description: This comprehensive evaluation of HRSA’s 9 Telehealth Technology-Enabled Learning Program (TTELP) projects aims to assess the reach, adoption, effectiveness, and implementation of ECHO- and ECHO-like telementoring among providers in rural and underserved areas. We will continue this comprehensive evaluation by collecting data regarding Year 3 Quarter 4 and Year 4 data and report cumulative results to HRSA.