# Personal Health Libraries for Formerly Incarcerated Individuals

> **NIH NIH R01** · YALE UNIVERSITY · 2023 · $351,687

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Individuals released from correctional facilities have high rates of hospitalization and death, especially in the
weeks following release. Disproportionately poor and of racial and ethnic minority groups, they are already a
high-risk group for poor health outcomes. The transition back to the community is marked with additional
difficulties navigating the healthcare, community correctional, and social service systems and structural
barriers to obtaining healthcare, housing, and employment. Individuals released from correctional facilities
must engage with many providers, which presents challenges organizing and acting on information received
from various organizations. Personal health information technologies are untapped resources which could
improve the transition from corrections to the community and mitigate health risks. There is an urgent need to
develop personal health information technologies in partnership with formerly incarcerated individuals and test
their efficacy in improving health outcomes. Using these technologies, formerly incarcerated individuals could
organize, understand and act on various sources of information, leading to improved self-efficacy and
improved health outcomes. Yet, there has not been a personal health information technology designed to meet
the needs and preferences of this population, which is critical for its acceptance and use. The long-term goal is
to improve the health of formerly incarcerated people, facilitated by their use of personal health information
technologies. The overall objective of this proposal is to develop and test strategies, in partnership with
formerly incarcerated people, to increase acceptance and use of a personal health library (PerHL) mobile app.
Preliminary data indicate that using a participatory health informatics approach to engage people with histories
of incarceration can lead to acceptance and use of a health technology. The central hypothesis of our study is
that developing and refining PerHL in partnership with formerly incarcerated people will increase its
acceptance and use. To test this hypothesis, we propose three aims: (1) Assess the facilitators and barriers of
the development and use of personal health information technology for formerly incarcerated individuals, (2)
Develop and refine PerHL for formerly incarcerated individuals, and (3) Conduct a pilot randomized trial to test
the acceptance and use of PerHL among formerly incarcerated individuals. We will leverage the expertise and
infrastructure of Transitions Clinic Network, a national network of primary care clinics for formerly incarcerated
people, and a multidisciplinary team of informaticists, clinical providers, formerly incarcerated individuals, and
criminal justice leaders, creating a best-case scenario for developing PerHL. This study represents a new and
substantial departure from the status quo by incorporating a participatory health informatics approach and state
of the art informatics ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10688167
- **Project number:** 5R01LM013477-04
- **Recipient organization:** YALE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Karen H Wang
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $351,687
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-09-10 → 2025-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10688167

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10688167, Personal Health Libraries for Formerly Incarcerated Individuals (5R01LM013477-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10688167. Licensed CC0.

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