Health Equity and Rural Education (HERE!) Clinical Trial

The goal of this community-engaged research is two-fold. The first goal is to gather stakeholder feedback to inform a school-based community health worker intervention with youth with poor school attendance and an enhanced usual care condition. The second goal is to evaluate the feasibility of implementing the school-based community health worker intervention and enhanced usual care approach within rural schools. The main question it aims to answer is whether it is feasibile to recruit children with poor school attendance and their families to the intervention, to complete the trauma-informed intervention, and to complete the associated study measures of meeting social determinants of health/mental health needs, school-based health center utilization, and behavioral helath symptoms. At least 38 rural students in grades 6-12 with poor school attendance and their parents/guardians will meet with the school-based community health worker for support around social determinants of health needs that may be barriers to attendance. Researchers will also assess the feasibility of recruiting at least 10 rural students and their parents/guardians to complete the study measures in an enhanced usual care condition in which the school-based health center without a school-based community health worker is reminded of the availability of an online social services directory.

The HERE pilot study will consist of two phases to strengthen and finalize the HERE school-based community health worker (SB-CHW) intervention. The 6-month Phase I will provide broad stakeholder feedback on the proposed model and rationale, the SB-CHW intervention, the associated domains and measures, and the evaluation. The following 18-month Phase II will align with the school year and provide a feasibility test of the training, intervention, data collection, and analyses.

Phase I Stakeholder Interviews (nonintervention): Inclusion Criteria: * A member of the program's Community Advisory Board, including community health workers; * Caregiver of a child ages 12-18 from the Southeast Kansas region; or * Student at least 12 years in age. Phase II Feasibility Pilot- SB-CHW Intervention and Enhanced Usual Care Conditions Inclusion Criteria: * Children ages 12-18 and their parents/guardians from the Southeast Kansas region * Student with or at risk for chronic poor attendance (missing 10% or more of the days that school has been in session at any point in the school year) Exclusion Criteria: * Parents/guardians or youth with profound intellectual/cognitive disability will be excluded.