Despite advances in asthma therapies and the wide-spread dissemination of asthma clinical guidelines, low-income, minority children have disproportionately high morbidity and mortality from asthma. The National Center for Children in Poverty has strongly argued that effective interventions to improve asthma health disparities and reduce harm must begin in early childhood. Previous efficacy studies have suggested that asthma education programs can be effective in improving overall management of asthma for preschool children. However, for these promising asthma intervention strategies to have sustainable public health impact for low-income, minority children they must be integrated within those medical, educational and social structures that serve these young high risk children, such as community clinics, schools and day care programs. Because one of the core missions of federally- funded Head Start programs is to provide preventive health services and screening to their low-income preschool students, Head Start represents an ideal community setting for disseminating early asthma education. We propose to draw on our established health and research partnership with Head Start programs in Baltimore City to test the effectiveness of this home-based asthma education intervention with demonstrated efficacy, when delivered in the context of a Head Start-wide asthma education program. We further propose to partner with Head Start to support and evaluate adoption, maintenance and dissemination of new knowledge gained from this project. Specifically we hypothesize that participants receiving the ABC intervention combined with a HS-level asthma education will have more symptom free days at the 6-, 9-, and 12-month evaluation when compared with participants in the HS- level asthma education alone. We plan to enroll of 406 children age 2-6 years old enrolled in Head Start with symptomatic asthma. Secondary outcome measures include other measures of asthma morbidity (i.e., hospitalizations, ED visits, oral steroid bursts, school absences, and caregiver quality of life). We will also evaluate the mediating effects of outcomes expectancies, self-efficacy, asthma knowledge, motivation, and asthma management practices, as well as moderator effects, such as health literacy, caregiver depression, neighborhood cohesion, family management of asthma, and Head Start adoption and dissemination of an asthma education curriculum.

Public Health Relevance

Despite advances in asthma therapies and the wide-spread dissemination of asthma clinical guidelines, low-income, minority children have disproportionately high morbidity and mortality from asthma. The current study will test the effectiveness of this home-based asthma education intervention with demonstrated efficacy, when delivered in the context of a Head Start-wide asthma education program in improving asthma morbidity. If successful, this project could have significant public health implications for reducing health disparities for minority children with asthma.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
Type
Research Demonstration and Dissemination Projects (R18)
Project #
5R18HL107223-04
Application #
8646982
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZHL1-CSR-Z (F1))
Program Officer
Freemer, Michelle M
Project Start
2011-07-01
Project End
2017-03-31
Budget Start
2015-04-01
Budget End
2016-03-31
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
2015
Total Cost
$684,447
Indirect Cost
$141,235
Name
Johns Hopkins University
Department
Internal Medicine/Medicine
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
001910777
City
Baltimore
State
MD
Country
United States
Zip Code
21205
Callaghan-Koru, Jennifer A; Riekert, Kristin A; Ruvalcaba, Elizabeth et al. (2018) Home Medication Readiness for Preschool Children With Asthma. Pediatrics 142:
Sadreameli, S Christy; Riekert, Kristin A; Matsui, Elizabeth C et al. (2018) Family Caregiver Marginalization is Associated With Decreased Primary and Subspecialty Asthma Care in Head Start Children. Acad Pediatr 18:905-911
Ruvalcaba, Elizabeth; Chung, Shang-En; Rand, Cynthia et al. (2018) Evaluating the implementation of a multicomponent asthma education program for Head Start staff. J Asthma :1-9