{"id":{"repo_id":"ottawa-retro","oai_identifier":"oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/50665"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/ottawa-retro/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/50665","repository":{"repo_id":"ottawa-retro","name":"University of Ottawa","base_url":"https://ruor.uottawa.ca/server/oai/request"},"display":{"title":"Decisional Needs of African, Caribbean, and Black Patients Diagnosed with Brain-Heart Conditions","abstract":"Equity-deserving groups, including African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) populations, face barriers to equitable brain-heart healthcare. These barriers contribute to unmet decisional needs and challenges in making informed health decisions. For my master's thesis, I aimed to investigate the decisional needs of ACB patients with brain-heart conditions and the unique challenges they encounter during decision-making using an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design. We included participants from equity-deserving groups who participated in an ongoing parent study. We administered surveys and conducted semi-structured interviews with adult patients from the Ottawa Hospital, the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, and community organizations. Our work was guided by the Ottawa Decision Support Framework, PROGRESS-Plus framework, and intersectionality theory. Survey results from 23 participants facing a variety of brain-heart health decisions in the past 12 months revealed that seven (30.4%) participants experienced clinically significant decisional conflict and six (30.0%) experienced clinically significant decision regret. The common challenges that participants experienced during decision-making included worrying about choosing the wrong option (n=10, 50%) and feeling that brain implications were never part of the conversation for their heart condition (n=9, 45%). The interviews further demonstrated complex barriers contributing to their unmet decisional needs, such as difficulties in accessing health information, strong emotions, challenges with patient-clinician communication, mistrust, and barriers to healthcare access. We integrated these findings using joint displays. The insights gained from this study can inform the development of equitable decision-support interventions to effectively address the decisional needs of ACB patients with brain-heart conditions.","abstract_html":"Equity-deserving groups, including African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) populations, face barriers to equitable brain-heart healthcare. These barriers contribute to unmet decisional needs and challenges in making informed health decisions. For my master's thesis, I aimed to investigate the decisional needs of ACB patients with brain-heart conditions and the unique challenges they encounter during decision-making using an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design. We included participants from equity-deserving groups who participated in an ongoing parent study. We administered surveys and conducted semi-structured interviews with adult patients from the Ottawa Hospital, the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, and community organizations. Our work was guided by the Ottawa Decision Support Framework, PROGRESS-Plus framework, and intersectionality theory. Survey results from 23 participants facing a variety of brain-heart health decisions in the past 12 months revealed that seven (30.4%) participants experienced clinically significant decisional conflict and six (30.0%) experienced clinically significant decision regret. The common challenges that participants experienced during decision-making included worrying about choosing the wrong option (n=10, 50%) and feeling that brain implications were never part of the conversation for their heart condition (n=9, 45%). The interviews further demonstrated complex barriers contributing to their unmet decisional needs, such as difficulties in accessing health information, strong emotions, challenges with patient-clinician communication, mistrust, and barriers to healthcare access. We integrated these findings using joint displays. The insights gained from this study can inform the development of equitable decision-support interventions to effectively address the decisional needs of ACB patients with brain-heart conditions.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Gessese, Semhal"],"institution":"Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa","degree_name":null,"degree_level":null,"degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Lewis, Krystina B."],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2025,"date_issued":"2025-07-16T22:14:25Z","date_published":"2025-07-16T22:14:25Z","updated_at":"2026-07-24T03:39:25Z","subjects":["Shared decision-making","Decisional needs","Brain-heart health","Health Equity","Equity-deserving groups"],"languages":["en"],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://doi.org/10.20381/ruor-31250"],"render_values":[{"text":"https://doi.org/10.20381/ruor-31250","href":"https://doi.org/10.20381/ruor-31250","code":true}]}]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/10393/50665","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Lewis, Krystina B."]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Gessese, Semhal"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2025-07-16T22:14:25Z","2025-07-16"]},{"key":"dc:publisher","label":"Institution","values":["Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["Thesis"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Shared decision-making","Decisional needs","Brain-heart health","Health Equity","Equity-deserving groups"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["en"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/10393/50665","https://doi.org/10.20381/ruor-31250"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Equity-deserving groups, including African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) populations, face barriers to equitable brain-heart healthcare. These barriers contribute to unmet decisional needs and challenges in making informed health decisions. For my master's thesis, I aimed to investigate the decisional needs of ACB patients with brain-heart conditions and the unique challenges they encounter during decision-making using an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design. We included participants from equity-deserving groups who participated in an ongoing parent study. We administered surveys and conducted semi-structured interviews with adult patients from the Ottawa Hospital, the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, and community organizations. Our work was guided by the Ottawa Decision Support Framework, PROGRESS-Plus framework, and intersectionality theory. Survey results from 23 participants facing a variety of brain-heart health decisions in the past 12 months revealed that seven (30.4%) participants experienced clinically significant decisional conflict and six (30.0%) experienced clinically significant decision regret. The common challenges that participants experienced during decision-making included worrying about choosing the wrong option (n=10, 50%) and feeling that brain implications were never part of the conversation for their heart condition (n=9, 45%). The interviews further demonstrated complex barriers contributing to their unmet decisional needs, such as difficulties in accessing health information, strong emotions, challenges with patient-clinician communication, mistrust, and barriers to healthcare access. We integrated these findings using joint displays. The insights gained from this study can inform the development of equitable decision-support interventions to effectively address the decisional needs of ACB patients with brain-heart conditions."]},{"key":"dc:format","label":"Dc Format","values":["application/pdf"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Decisional Needs of African, Caribbean, and Black Patients Diagnosed with Brain-Heart Conditions"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Lewis, Krystina B."],"dc:creator":["Gessese, Semhal"],"dc:date":["2025-07-16T22:14:25Z","2025-07-16"],"dc:description":["Equity-deserving groups, including African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) populations, face barriers to equitable brain-heart healthcare. These barriers contribute to unmet decisional needs and challenges in making informed health decisions. For my master's thesis, I aimed to investigate the decisional needs of ACB patients with brain-heart conditions and the unique challenges they encounter during decision-making using an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design. We included participants from equity-deserving groups who participated in an ongoing parent study. We administered surveys and conducted semi-structured interviews with adult patients from the Ottawa Hospital, the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, and community organizations. Our work was guided by the Ottawa Decision Support Framework, PROGRESS-Plus framework, and intersectionality theory. Survey results from 23 participants facing a variety of brain-heart health decisions in the past 12 months revealed that seven (30.4%) participants experienced clinically significant decisional conflict and six (30.0%) experienced clinically significant decision regret. The common challenges that participants experienced during decision-making included worrying about choosing the wrong option (n=10, 50%) and feeling that brain implications were never part of the conversation for their heart condition (n=9, 45%). The interviews further demonstrated complex barriers contributing to their unmet decisional needs, such as difficulties in accessing health information, strong emotions, challenges with patient-clinician communication, mistrust, and barriers to healthcare access. We integrated these findings using joint displays. The insights gained from this study can inform the development of equitable decision-support interventions to effectively address the decisional needs of ACB patients with brain-heart conditions."],"dc:format":["application/pdf"],"dc:identifier":["http://hdl.handle.net/10393/50665","https://doi.org/10.20381/ruor-31250"],"dc:language":["en"],"dc:publisher":["Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa"],"dc:subject":["Shared decision-making","Decisional needs","Brain-heart health","Health Equity","Equity-deserving groups"],"dc:title":["Decisional Needs of African, Caribbean, and Black Patients Diagnosed with Brain-Heart Conditions"],"dc:type":["Thesis"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-24T03:39:25Z"}