Families First Edmonton (FFE)

Study Overview
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Brief Summary
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This study is designed to provide clear evidence for health and social policymakers about the influence of alternate service-delivery models and practices on enhancing and sustaining low-income family linkages to available services. A challenge faced by Canadian health and social service providers is to promote health for low-income families in a proactive and cost-effective manner. Families with low incomes experience an array of health and social barriers that compromise their resilience, lead to negative family outcomes, and act as barriers to available services. Family barriers are compounded by service delivery barriers and result in reduced opportunities for effective, primary-level services and in increased use of secondary-level services (e.g., emergency room visits, emergency intervention, police involvement), with the obvious increase in costs. Randomized-controlled trials are rare in community-based intervention research. This Families First Edmonton randomized-controlled trial (RCT) will enable testing of innovative service-delivery models and provide an opportunity for evidence-based decision making for Canadian policy makers. Critical information will be provided about optimizing cost effectiveness for public systems the long-term effects on the health of low-income family members mechanisms that intervene between the interventions and their effect on the health of low-income family members building on previous research and on community-based initiatives promoting knowledge transfer

Official Title
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Families First Edmonton: The Comparative Effects and Expense of Four Models of Augmenting Services for Low-income Families

Conditions
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Low-Income Population

Intervention / Treatment
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* Behavioral: Primary Health Care Model (PRMHLTH)
* Behavioral: Recreation Coordination Model (REC)
* Behavioral: Comprehensive Model (COMP)


Participation Criteria
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Eligibility Criteria
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Inclusion Criteria: Participant families will have received low-income assistance either in the form of Alberta Works Income Support Alberta Child Health Benefits, Alberta Works Adult Health Benefits participating in City of Edmonton Leisure Access Program living in Capital Region Housing have a child or children between 0 and 12 years of age reside in city of Edmonton be able to provide signed consent Exclusion Criteria: Potential study participants will be excluded if they refuse to give informed consent to be interviewed are unable to read and write English and an appropriate translator is not available have plans to move outside the region are unwilling to participate for the entire follow-up period
Sexes Eligible for Study
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All

Accepts Healthy Volunteers
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Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Study Plan
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How is the study designed?
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Design Details

Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention Model: Factorial Assignment
Masking: Single


Arms and Interventions

| Participant Group/Arm | Intervention/Treatment |
| --- | --- |
| Experimental: 1<br> | Behavioral: Primary Health Care Model (PRMHLTH)<br>* Primary health care service delivery<br>|
| Experimental: 2<br> | Behavioral: Recreation Coordination Model (REC)<br>* Recreation coordination service delivery<br>|
| Experimental: 3<br> | Behavioral: Comprehensive Model (COMP)<br>* a comprehensive service delivery model consisting of PRMHLTH plus REC.<br>|

What is the study measuring?
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Primary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Increased linkages between low income families and established services in their communities |  | Baseline, 12-month, 24-month, 36-month follow-up | 

 Terms related to the study
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Keywords Provided by Centre Hospitalier Valida
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low-income families, children, recreation, family healthy lifestyle, linkages to community resources, Families with low incomes, working poor, welfare recipients