In as much as the demonstration and education project will be a collaborative effort and the specific protocol will be developed in the future, we do not describe a research plan, but do describe the personnel, resources and facilities available for participation as intervention test sites. We offer two resources for intervention test sites each of which has special, perhaps even unique, features that may be difficult to identify in other locations. The project offers access to pediatric and adult asthma patients in two different geographic regions. The Maricopa County, AZ site offers a large Hispanic population that has immigrated to the northeastern United States from the Caribbean. Maricopa County has also been identified as one of four counties in the United States with an excess asthma mortality rate. The county is served by the Maricopa County Medical Center; this center is affiliated with the applicant organization. An essential preliminary activity will be the translation of medical information written in English into idiomatic Spanish, and the evaluation of the accuracy and comprehensibility of the translation for this particular minority group. The second geographic area is Rochester, MN. Population-based epidemiologic research is possible at this site because medical care is self-contained within the community and delivered by two providers. An existing data base characterizes much of the population and has been used to identify all patients with asthma residing in the area between 1964 and 1983. The investigators propose that the Rochester population, which is primarily Caucasian, could possibly be used as a comparison group of caucasian Americans with access to health care, as a well defined cohort of elderly Caucasian patients with asthma, and as a population-based cohort available to other Centers.
| Plager, Douglas A; Davis, Mark D P; Andrews, Amy G et al. (2009) Eosinophil ribonucleases and their cutaneous lesion-forming activity. J Immunol 183:4013-20 |
