NCT07346040

Health Support Project for Persons With Disabilities

• Status: Not Yet Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 600 (estimated)
• Sponsor: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 15 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

The goal of this clinical trial is to evaluate the health status of people with disabilities, to improve their health outcomes by providing support on nutrition, physical activity, and self-management of chronic conditions, and to strengthen sectors' capacity to deliver health management services and support for people with disabilities through a train-the-trainer program.

Detailed description

In sheltered workshops (SWs) and integrated vocational rehabilitation services centers (IVRSCs) across Hong Kong, people with disabilities (PWDs) are provided with one-stop, integrated, and seamless vocational rehabilitation services in a specially designed environment. The aim is to help PWDs develop their social and economic potential to the fullest extent. Comorbid disorders - often overlooked when relevant sectors (e.g., non-government organizations) or healthcare professionals fail to look beyond disabilities - are likely to impose additional burdens on existing workload, resulting in adverse effect on their performance in areas such as productivity, health outcomes, personal well-being, and quality of life. Poor management of comorbid disorders may even lead to increased morbidity and mortality rates. The Health Support Program (HSP) is a structured, multi-component intervention developed in close collaboration with a multidisciplinary research team of occupational therapists, physiotherapists, dietitians, and nurses from the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences and the Department of Food Science and Nutrition at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The program consists of three components: (1) nutrition, (2) physical activity, and (3) self-management of chronic conditions. The intervention is rooted in the Health Belief Model, and each component is developed based on international guidelines and current research findings. The HSP is tailored for PWDs with or without intellectual disabilities to improve health outcomes and is delivered with the assistance of the Digital Health Profile (DHP) System for the PWDs in the SWs and IVRSCs. The DHP is a centralized database designed to record the health conditions of PWDs and optimize workflow management. Supported by an interactive dashboard and e-resources on health management, the core function of the DHP is to create health profiles for each PWDs, so that trained personnel from the SWs and IVRSCs can monitor and manage the health status of each PWDs more effectively and accurately. The DHP in all SWs and IVRSCs can together produce a comprehensive overview of the health conditions of PWDs in the community, which could facilitate and provide useful information for policy making. Eligible PWDs in the SWs and IVRSCs who have at least one of the following physician-diagnosed chronic conditions: diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, cardiovascular disease, or obesity, will be recruited in a pragmatic, open-label, parallel-group, cluster-randomized clinical trial. The implementation of the HSP will be evaluated using the Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, Maintenance (RE-AIM) Framework.

Conditions

• Disabilities

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Health Support Program	The Health Support Program (HSP) is a structured, multi-component intervention. The nutrition component will consist of one 45-minute \[for those without intellectual disability (ID)\] or 30-minute \[for ID participants\] group-based healthy eating education session per week, led by registered dietitians. The physical activity component will consist of three 30-minute sessions per week led by registered physiotherapists, together with the encouragement of community exercise and walk every day. Self-management of chronic conditions component will be implemented weekly in a 45-minute \[for non-ID participants\] or 30-minute \[for ID participants\] education session in a group format, which will be led by occupational therapists and nurses. To accommodate cognitive deficits in participants with ID and maximize their learning outcomes, additional support will be provided in terms of the structure (e.g., interactive format) of the intervention.

Timeline

• Start date: 2026-01-15
• Primary completion: 2027-02-28
• Completion: 2027-02-28
• First posted: 2026-01-16
• Last updated: 2026-01-16