A Feasibility Study Evaluating a Community Health Worker Training Program to Support Adults With Hearing Loss in Rural Alabama Communities
Bibliographic record
Abstract
PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of community health worker (CHW) training to support adults with hearing loss who are living in rural communities of West Central and South Alabama. Knowledge and skills, in addition to the degree of confidence in performing tasks associated with the aural rehabilitation program, were assessed. METHOD: Eighteen adults who were active in their communities through nonprofit organizations, educational organizations, health facilities, or had other volunteering experiences, participated in this study. They received 3 days of initial training and were provided with opportunities to practice their skills after training. Pre- and posttraining assessments included a knowledge quiz and a confidence in skills survey. These results were compared to the findings from a control group of 16 CHWs who were administered the same assessments. A refresher training session was provided approximately 15 months after the initial training, and further assessments were administered. The Ottawa Model of Research Use was used as the framework for implementing the study. RESULTS: Statistical analyses revealed that posttraining quiz results were significantly higher than pretraining quiz outcomes, and scores from the postrefresher training quiz were significantly better than the posttraining quiz results. A significant increase in confidence in skills also was obtained after the CHWs were given opportunities to practice their skills in real-world settings. Finally, compared to the control group results, outcomes from the initial posttraining quiz were significantly better in the experimental group. CONCLUSIONS: The outcomes suggest that training CHWs to support adults with hearing loss in their communities is feasible and has the potential to increase access to hearing health care for those living in underserved communities. Further work is needed to understand how other professionals in the community could support the increased need for hearing health care services and related behavioral issues.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".