Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Aug 8, 2025
Date Accepted: Apr 29, 2026
The Impact of Telehealth Use Experience on Recruitment of Underserved Populations into a Telehealth-delivered Mindfulness Based Trial for Patients with Chronic Low Back Pain: A Cross-sectional Survey
ABSTRACT
Background:
Telehealth-delivered mindfulness-based stress reduction may scale the dissemination of this evidence-based treatment to medically underserved populations with chronic low back pain.
Objective:
Examine the individual and county-level social vulnerability characteristics of those who had and those who never had a telehealth visit prior to enrollment in the OPTIMUM study.
Methods:
Cross sectional analysis of 244 OPTIMUM study participants.
Results:
Adjusted model indicated that non-Hispanic Blacks and Hispanics were less likely to have previously used telehealth compared to non-Hispanic Whites. Those having < high school degree, worked part-time and < five years of back pain were less likely to have previously used telehealth. We found that previous non-use of telehealth was associated with socioeconomic factors and length of pain, but those factors did not prevent patients from enrolling in the OPTIMUM study.
Conclusions:
Researchers should be intentional in their efforts to recruit medically underserved populations for telehealth delivered treatments for back pain. Clinical Trial: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04129450; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04129450
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