Skip to main content
OpenTrials
Completed

NCT Number: NCT04131101

Housing Conditions: Evaluation, Advocacy and Research in Toronto Community Housing

This project will examine whether a health promotion campaign using community organizing and joint advocacy by a coalition of tenants, health providers, social service agencies and advocates can lead to improvements in building conditions and health in social housing.

Completed

Looking for future studies?

Notify Me

Key information

Conditions

Housing

Age range

18 year and older

Sex eligibility

All sexes

Study type

Interventional

Phase

Not applicable

Primary location

St. Michael's Hospital

Toronto, Ontario, M5B1W8, Canada

About this study

This community based participatory research project will bring together patients of the St. Michael's Hospital Academic Family Health Team (FHT) who are tenants of Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) with health providers, legal service staff at the Health Justice Program, social service agencies and advocacy organizations to advocate to improve building conditions in three TCHC buildings. The researchers will evaluate the acceptability and feasibility of this health promotion campaign as well as changes in the state of housing and self rated physical and mental health of tenants.

Who can participate

Healthy volunteers accepted: Yes

Only the study team can determine whether someone qualifies for participation.

Inclusion criteria

  • 18 years or older
  • Living in one of the three TCHC buildings

Exclusion criteria

  • under 18 years old

Treatment and study plan

Community Organizing

Behavioral

The intervention will be community organizing and will consist of engaging tenants, health providers, legal service staff, social service agencies and advocacy organizations (e.g. ACORN). Each building team will identify initial priorities and then invite all building members to discuss and to finalize, as well as a plan for change. Building teams will engage in advocacy to TCHC and its representatives, and other city departments as appropriate. Engaging in advocacy will consist of a wide range of activities but essentially means presenting evidence (e.g. personal experiences, data) to policymakers and decision makers to affect change.

Primary outcomes

  1. Tenant engagement in intervention

    Time frame: 12 months

    Acceptability and feasibility of the intervention, assessed through qualitative focus groups with participants in each intervention building. The HEARTH Survey was built by the research team (example question: How satisfied are you with the condition of your building?). All qualitative data will be managed and analyzed with the data management software, NVivo.

  2. Building conditions

    Time frame: 12 months

    Change in the state of housing evaluated by a questionnaire completed by tenants and official reports from the Toronto Community Housing Corporation. The HEARTH survey consisted of various questions relating to this, leading to different answers due to different scales. For example, for safety of the building, the options were: very safe, fairly safe, neither safe nor unsafe, fairly unsafe, and very unsafe. All scales had 5 options/outcomes but different wordings. No quantitative score was used for this.

  3. Health (Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) scale)

    Time frame: 12 months

    Change in self-rated physical and mental health, sense of security, social integration, evaluated by surveys of residents using PROMIS scale. This scale is validated. For pain, the minimum score is 0 and the maximum score is 10, with 10 representing the worst pain imaginable. The higher the number on the scale, the worse the outcome/issue is.

Sponsors and collaborators

Lead sponsor

Unity Health Toronto

Other

Registry information

Acronym: HEARTH

Important dates

Study start
2018
Primary completion
2020
Study completion
2021
First posted
Oct 18, 2019
Registry last updated
Jan 6, 2025

OpenTrials presents study information sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov. The official registry record should be consulted for the latest information.

View the official ClinicalTrials.gov record (opens in a new tab)

This listing is for discovery and informational purposes only. It is not medical advice, does not guarantee that a study is recruiting, and does not determine eligibility. Contact the study team and a qualified healthcare professional when considering participation.

Related clinical trials

Published trials that share one or more normalized conditions with this study.