Baseline characteristics of Veterans from improving Veteran access to integrated management of back pain (AIM-Back) – an embedded pragmatic, cluster-randomized trial in the United States

OBJECTIVE: Describe baseline characteristics and representativeness of AIM-Back trial participants relative to Veterans with low back pain at participating clinics. METHODS: Veterans were referred to AIM-Back randomized care pathways and included 1) enrolled participants with data collected in the Electronic Health Record (EHR) by clinical staff with no consent required and 2) survey participants who provided informed consent with data collected via surveys by research staff. Descriptive statistics were reported. Participation to prevalence ratios (PPRs) were calculated for sex, age, race, and ethnicity by clinic to describe representativeness. RESULTS: Across 17 primary care clinics, the Referral cohort included 2767 unique Veterans with CONCLUSIONS: These findings provide detailed insights for participants that will be included in future analyses of care pathway effectiveness. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT04411420.