CMH SOW.pdf

STATEMENT OF WORK (SOW)

PROJECT: Client Language Analysis in Veterans and Non-Veterans with Low Motivation to Quit Smoking: Identifying Mechanisms of Change

PROJECT TIMELINE: July 1st, 2022 – June 30th, 2023

GENERAL INFORMATION

Note: The C&A requirements do not apply. A Security Accreditation Package is not required.

1. Background

Veterans disproportionately suffer cigarette-related disease and death relative to the general population, but Veterans often endorse low motivation to quit. Given the high prevalence of smoking in Veterans, identifying therapeutic techniques associated with positive outcomes in unmotivated smokers has great potential to improve Veteran health. Therapies for unmotivated smokers include motivational interviewing (MI), which aims to enhance intrinsic motivation by resolving ambivalence; and health education (HE), which delivers scripted health advice.

2. Project Scope This project is a secondary analysis of existing session audio recordings from two recently completed randomized controlled trials (RCTs), one of which took place at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. This RCT was conducted by psychologist, Dr. Delwyn Catley, Ph.D., and it resulted in 204 audio-recorded sessions (of participants’ f irst clinical visit) that utilized either MI (n = 102) or HE (n = 102) as the therapeutic paradigm. A subset of these audio-recorded sessions (n = 37) have previously been transcribed, and are also maintained by Children’s Mercy Hospital.

The vendor, Children’s Mercy Hospital, will initiate, oversee, and complete the email transfer of all 204 audio files, plus the 37 transcriptions that they have retained.

Once the SFVA research team has secured the 204 audio files, we will electronically submit all f iles that have not been transcribed to the VHA’s Centralized Transcription Service Program (CTSP), housed in the VHA Salt Lake City to complete the transcription process.

Once transcribed, SFVA requires that the vendor, Children’s Mercy Hospital, trains our coding team (comprised of 3 coders) to parse the transcripts and then code them using the Motivational Interviewing Skill Code 2.5 (MISC 2.5), a validated MI client language measure.

Additionally, we will need to use an extension of this coding system, the Health Education Skills Code (HESC), that was developed by Dr. Delwyn Catley, in order to evaluate sessions for specific HE language and fulfill the scientific objectives of the study.

The contractor, SFVA, requires that Children’s Mercy Hospital provides the appropriate staff (at least 1 person) with expertise in MI, HE, and behavioral health intervention, in order to train and oversee the progress of the SFVA coding team in properly and reliably coding the transcripts for MI- and HE- targeted language.

Once the coding of the transcripts is complete, the contractor, SFVA, requires that the vendor, Children’s Mercy Hospital, provides the appropriate staff (at least 1 person) to work with the Project PI, Dr. Ellen Herbst, and the rest of the project’s staff, to contribute to the statistical analysis and interpretation of the data, eventually culminating in a treatment manual that incorporates MI and HE techniques designed for unmotivated Veteran smokers.

These such meetings will continue through March 2023.

3. Project Role The vendor, Children’s Mercy Hospital, will provide full digital access to the 204 audio files, plus the 37 transcriptions of those files already completed. They will be sent digitally, either by email, or another VA-approved secure method of file transfer.

SFVA, the contractor, also further requires the services of a healthcare professional with experience in behavioral treatment interventions that utilize both Motivational Interviewing and Health Education techniques, who can train our coding team of 3 coders to properly and reliably code the transcripts using the MISC 2.5 & the HESC.

The training process, including supervising the progress of all of the transcriptions, will take place over a period of about 6 months, and it will require weekly to twice-weekly meetings with both the coding staff, and separately, with the PI and other investigators on this project.

We estimate these meetings, in total, will require about 80 hours of time to complete the training of coders and for the overall supervision of the project’s progress.

Once all of the transcriptions have been parsed and coded by the coding team, the contractor, SFVA, requires that Children’s Mercy Hospital provide the services of a healthcare professional (may be the same individual who trained the coding team) who can provide further expertise in the examination of process data acquired from the audio-recorded sessions.

Specifically, the investigative team led by Dr. Herbst, will meet weekly or every-other-week from September 2022 through March 2023, via Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and by telephone, to ensure that the in-session codings are appropriately interpreted, based on the knowledge of the parent study’s protocol (estimated ~20 hours). Once the codings have been interpreted satisfactorily, the investigative team will focus on drafting a treatment manual that is designed for unmotivated Veteran smokers. The contractor, SFVA, requires that a healthcare professional virtually attend most of these meetings and contributes to this final product, and furthermore assists the investigating team with disseminating the findings of this project.

Dr. Delwyn Catley His expertise in smoking cessation, motivational interviewing, behavioral health interventions, and counseling process research will be essential in understanding the client language and its relationship to treatment outcomes, and we will also require his collaboration to assist in drafting a treatment manual incorporating MI and HE techniques designed for unmotivated Veteran smokers.

4. Delivery Location & Requirements:

To summarize, Children’s Mercy Hospital of Kansas City, Missouri, will conduct the secure email transfer of 204 audio files, plus 37 transcriptions. All audio files and transcriptions will need to be securely transferred by email to the SFVA within two months of the start of this contract.

Because of Dr. Delwyn Catley’s uniqueness in being the PI of the parent project and his expertise in the relevant domains of smoking cessation, motivational interviewing, and his novel Health Education paradigm that we will be using, the contractor, SFVA, believes that he would be an appropriate fit for our project’s needs. However, should he be unable to fill this role for any reason, the contractor will accept the training services of another individual (or individuals) who can commit to the time needed to help complete this project.

Specifically, this individual will need to virtually attend the team meetings (by telephone or webcam, etc.). The first 3 months will be dedicated to training the coding team to properly and reliably code transcripts using both the MISC 2.5 and HESC systems. Once reliability is established amongst the coding team, the following 3 months will be dedicated to overseeing the progress of parsing and coding the transcriptions. In total, the training and supervision of the progress is estimated to take about 80 hours of time over 6 months.

Next, once the coding training milestone is achieved and the transcriptions are then coded, SFVA requires that the vendor provide a healthcare professional (Dr. Delwyn Catley or another suitable individual) with experience in counseling process research and statistical analysis to assist the investigative team in interpreting results. Using SPSS and/or other statistical software, this individual will collaborate with our investigative team to generate reports that detail the findings of our study.

Again, these meetings will begin once the transcriptions are completely coded (roughly 6 months after the training of the coders starts), and the meetings will be devoted to organizing, analyzing, and disseminating the results of this study, with a bulk of the effort put toward drafting a treatment manual that incorporates MI and HE techniques for unmotivated Veteran smokers.

Because of the uniqueness of his qualif ications, Dr. Delwyn Catley is an appropriate choice of individual who can both train our coding team in his novel HE paradigm, and also contribute to the statistical interpretation and creation of a Treatment Manual utilizing MI and HE for unmotivated Veteran Smokers.

Otherwise, the contractor reserves the right to work with the vendor in finding a suitable replacement for Dr. Delwyn Catley at any point during the 1-year performance period of this contract.

All responsibilities pertaining to this contract will end within 90 days of the project’s deadline of March 31st, 2023.