UTHealth Houston researchers receive funding to advance brain injury care through mobile technology
Researchers at UTHealth Houston have been awarded a $400,000 grant to support an initiative focused on understanding current use of mobile applications for response and care for children and adolescents experiencing traumatic brain injury (TBI). The project, Implementing Cellphone Emerging Technologies for Brain Injury (ICE-TBI), will study how mobile phone applications can be designed and implemented to deliver essential health information to families, healthcare providers, schools, and communities.
The initiative is led by Kevin Rix, PhD, MPH, assistant professor for the Department of Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences at UTHealth Houston School of Public Health, to bridge gaps in access to care, especially in underserved and rural communities.
“This research will be especially important for more rural and distant communities who cannot necessarily get quick or regular access to specialists after a child has sustained a TBI,” said Rix, who also serves as assistant professor for the Department of Pediatrics at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston.
Throughout the research, the team will conduct focus groups and interviews with families, healthcare professionals, sports personnel, and community stakeholders to understand barriers to adopting technology for health-related information. Utilizing the results from the mixed method approach, the final phase of the research will include developing an actionable implementation roadmap for deploying cellphone based technologies “We want to understand what is important to people who will be actually using a cellphone app after a TBI, whether it is finding the nearest provider, understanding what to expect as they recover, or barriers they are facing in getting the care they need,” said Rix.
Funding for ICE-TBI was provided by the Toyota Way Forward Fund and emphasizes the importance of supporting community and pediatric health through quick and reliable methods of connecting users with important health information. “We recognize that not everyone has the same direct access to care, investigating how we implement technology more appropriately into communities will help bridge this gap,” Rix said.
Other investigators on the ICE-TBI research include: Stephanie Silveira, PhD, assistant professor of management, policy and community health at UTHealth Houston School of Public Health; Summer Ott, PsyD, associate professor in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at McGovern Medical School; Sandra McKay, MD, associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics at McGovern Medical School and division chief of Community Health and General Pediatrics; and Mary Aitken, MD, MPH professor and chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the medical school. The team will also partner with the National Association of State Head Injury Administrators to ensure findings inform local and national brain injury care strategies.