Annals of Family Medicine: Hands-On Navigation Helps More Primary Care Patients Reach Needed Resources Than Traditional Signposting
PROVIDENCE, R.I., July 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Primary care patients who worked with a dedicated navigator were significantly more likely to access needed health and social services than patients directed to a free information helpline, according to a randomized controlled trial published in the July/August 2026 issue of Annals of Family Medicine.
The trial compares two levels of navigation support within social prescribing, an approach in which clinicians connect patients to community resources that address needs such as housing, transportation, food and social connection.
Researchers led by Simone Dahrouge, PhD, of the Bruyère Health Research Institute and the University of Ottawa, enrolled 326 adult primary care patients in Ottawa and Greater Sudbury, Canada. Patients with health and/or social needs were randomly assigned to an intervention arm consisting of a comprehensive navigation service called the Access to Resources in the Community (ARC) model or a control arm involving signposting. The ARC model offered patients appointments with a bilingual navigator who provided ongoing, personalized support for up to three months, including help completing forms, assistance arranging transportation, and emotional support. The ARC navigation services were offered in person, by phone, by email, or by text, at the patient's preferences. The control arm consisted of signposting, wherein patients were directed to 211-Ontario, a free, online, and multilingual phone service that patients contact themselves and which mostly provides information about available resources during the initial call with no planned follow-up.
Patients assigned to ARC had a significantly higher rate of self-reported access to needed resources three months after enrollment compared with patients assigned to 211-Ontario (50.3% vs. 35.8%). ARC patients also accessed more resources on average and reported greater improvement in their ability to engage in their care. Within the ARC group, access rose with each additional in-person visit with the navigator.
The trial was partly designed to examine equity for Ontario's Francophone minority, which makes up less than 5% of the province's population and often faces barriers to receiving care in French. ARC navigators used an "active offer" approach, inviting all patients to receive the navigation services and the community resources in the official language of their choice. Among Francophone patients who wanted community services in French, 92% of resources accessed through the ARC group were French-language concordant, compared with 36% in the 211-Ontario group.
In an accompanying editorial by Laura M. Gottlieb, MD, MPH, and colleagues at the Social Interventions Research and Evaluation Network at the University of California, write that the trial joins a growing body of evidence suggesting more intensive, relationship-based navigation outperforms lower-intensity approaches, and that its findings on patient complexity, visit modality and language concordance should inform how health systems design and target social care investments.
Articles Cited
Simone Dahrouge, PhD; Alain P. Gauthier, PhD; François Durand, PhD; Manon Lemonde, PhD; Patrick Timony, PhD; Kiran Saluja, PhD; Claire E. Kendall, MD, PhD; Kamila Premji, MD, PhD (c); Marie-Hélène Chomienne, MD, MSc; Monica Taljaard, PhD; John Hoyles, JD; Darene Toal-Sullivan, PhD; Karen James; Justin Presseau, PhD; and Denis Prud'homme, MD, MS
Funding: The study was funded by the Ontario Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR) IMPACT Award. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03451552.
Laura M. Gottlieb, MD, MPH; Emma Tucher, PhD; and Danielle Hessler, PhD
Annals of Family Medicine is an open access, peer-reviewed, indexed research journal that provides a cross-disciplinary forum for new, evidence-based information affecting the primary care disciplines. Launched in May 2003, Annals of Family Medicine is sponsored by six family medical organizations, including the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Board of Family Medicine, the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, the Association of Departments of Family Medicine, the Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors, and the North American Primary Care Research Group. Annals of Family Medicine is published online six times each year, charges no fee for publication, and contains original research from the clinical, biomedical, social, and health services areas, as well as contributions on methodology and theory, selected reviews, essays, and editorials. Complete editorial content and interactive discussion groups for each published article can be accessed for free on the journal's website, www.AnnFamMed.org.
SOURCE Annals of Family Medicine
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