Communication Service for the Deaf, Inc. (CSD) has been granted a $250,000 Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Award to spearhead a groundbreaking project aimed at improving virtual healthcare access for Deaf American Sign Language (ASL) users. The two-year initiative, set to run from November 1, 2024, through October 31, 2026, seeks to address the unique challenges faced by the Deaf community in accessing telemedicine services, which have become increasingly prevalent since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The project, titled ‘Building Capacity for Deaf American Sign Language Users in Virtual Healthcare PCOR/CER,’ will be led by CSD’s health and patient advocacy division, DeafHealth. It aims to form a national Deaf Patient Coalition, bringing together diverse stakeholders to capture and analyze Deaf patient experiences with virtual healthcare platforms. This coalition will play a crucial role in shaping future patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) and comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER) focused on healthcare virtual platforms for the Deaf community.
Allysa Dittmar, MHS, Vice President of DeafHealth, will serve as the project lead. The initiative will be supported by Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), with Dr. Tiffany Panko, executive director of the Deaf Health Care & Biomedical Science Hub and director of the Deaf Health Laboratory at RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf, providing leadership.
