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

NCT04131101 | Completed

• 1 other identifier: SMH-18-154
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 53
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

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.

Conditions

Housing

Keywords

Community organizing; Advocacy

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (3)

• Tenant engagement in intervention

  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.

  12 months

• Building conditions

  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.

  12 months

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

  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.

  12 months

Study Arms (1)

Community Organizing

EXPERIMENTAL

All tenants in three TCHC buildings will be invited to participate in a survey on their building conditions at baseline, 6 months and 12 months. Once baseline data collection is complete, there will be a community organizing campaign involving tenants to advocate for improved building conditions.

Behavioral: Community Organizing

Interventions

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.

Community Organizing

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 18 Years+
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Age Groups: Adult (18-64), Older Adult (65+)

You may qualify if:

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

You may not qualify if:

• under 18 years old

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Unity Health Toronto: lead

Study Sites (1)

St. Michael's Hospital

Toronto, Ontario, M5B1W8, Canada

Location

Study Officials

• Andrew Pinto, MSc MD

  Unity Health Toronto

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: NA
• Masking: NONE
• Purpose: OTHER
• Intervention Model: SINGLE GROUP
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: SPONSOR

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: May 31, 2019
• First Posted: October 18, 2019
• Study Start: October 22, 2018
• Primary Completion: July 2, 2020
• Study Completion: March 3, 2021
• Last Updated: January 6, 2025

Record last verified: 2024-12

Locations

CA (1)