Author ORCID Identifier
Document Type
Dissertation
Date of Award
2023
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Health Science
First Advisor
Sabina Kupershmidt
Abstract
Rural communities in the United States face challenges in providing palliative care due to the limited number of providers and the distances patients must travel to access services. Community health workers (CHWs) are community members who provide a connection between communities and health or social services providers and offer a potential innovation as members of palliative care teams to expand connections to palliative care services. However, there is little known about how CHWs are integrated into palliative care teams and whether palliative care providers and advocates would view this innovation as feasible, acceptable, and appropriate for the rural palliative care setting. The purpose of this dissertation study is to 1) understand the process of integrating CHWs into palliative care teams from the perspective of providers and advocates including potential challenges, barriers, and facilitators and 2) determine whether provider and advocate characteristics impact views of feasibility, acceptability, and appropriateness. Using a concurrent mixed method approach with a quantitative survey and qualitative focus group interviews, this investigation finds that providers and advocates view integrating CHWs as acceptable, appropriate, and feasible, with providers working in social fields viewing this as less appropriate and feasible than participants working in medical fields. Further, communication is identified as a core concept for team integration, influencing the palliative care team and community systems and ultimately relating to the patient and family centeredness of palliative care services. These processes along with identified barriers and facilitators of integration are used to identify appropriate implementation strategies in the rural setting.
Subject Categories
Medicine and Health Sciences
Keywords
community health workers, implementation science, palliative care
Number of Pages
176
Publisher
University of South Dakota
Recommended Citation
Kroeze Visser, Angela Beth, "COMMUNITY HEALTH WORKERS IN RURAL PALLIATIVE CARE: A MIXED METHOD EXPLORATION OF THE SOUTH DAKOTA CONTEXT" (2023). Dissertations and Theses. 299.
https://red.library.usd.edu/diss-thesis/299
