Better clinic communication to improve cancer care in rural and nonrural communities
IMPACT Project 4 – Budget impact, cost-effectiveness, and population outcomes of interventions to improve clinical communication and health care use in rural and nonrural areas
This project compares communication training and related clinic changes to see how they affect care, costs, and health outcomes for people affected by cancer across rural and nonrural areas.
Quick facts
| Grant type | P01 program project |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Univ of North Carolina Chapel Hill NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Chapel Hill, United States) |
| Project ID | NIH-11184376 on NIH RePORTER |
What this research studies
From a patient point of view, this work looks at how improving the way clinic teams talk with patients and each other could change care in both small and larger communities. Researchers will interview primary care staff, clinic quality leaders, and administrators in selected rural and nonrural clinics and run a national survey of primary care team members. They will combine those findings with economic and population models to estimate budget impact, cost-effectiveness, and likely outcomes if clinics adopt different communication approaches. The goal is to identify which communication changes give the best health and value results in different community settings.
Who could benefit from this research
Good fit: This project mainly seeks primary care clinicians, clinic staff, quality-improvement leaders, and healthcare administrators from rural and nonrural clinics rather than patients themselves.
Not a fit: Individual patients who are not connected to participating primary care clinics or who need direct medical treatments rather than system-level communication changes may not see immediate benefits.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, clinics could pick communication training that improves patient experiences, care use, and resource allocation—especially in under-resourced rural areas.
How similar studies have performed: Previous communication-training programs, including work with the Announcement Approach Training, have shown improvements in care use and communication, but combining those results with budget and population modeling across rural and nonrural settings is less common.
Where this research is happening
Chapel Hill, United States
- Univ of North Carolina Chapel Hill — Chapel Hill, United States (Active)
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Ozawa, Sachiko — Univ of North Carolina Chapel Hill
- Study coordinator: Ozawa, Sachiko
About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page below.