Methods and Implementation
Determine any survey instruments or other research tools needed for your project.
Determine on what level your project will occur and create a strategic plan for data collection (e.g. patient, practice, community level). Discuss how data collection can occur with your community partner
Develop a database for data from any surveys, interviews, other data collection (use your project folder accessed on your Data page).
This is a project to field test a system to refer poorly controlled asthmatics to a community agency that can investigate and mitigate asthma triggers in their homes. This project builds upon previous quality improvement work done in the Asthma Center by adding environmental mitigation to the menu of items available to patients. Since there have been barriers to implementation of such a program in Cincinnati, we wish to develop this hospital-community partnership to better understand and address these barriers to improve asthma care as has been done in multiple other centers around the country.
Children will be recruited from the Difficult to Treat asthma clinic at CCHMC and other clinics as needed. The project coordinator will prescreen by reviewing the Difficult to Treat asthma clinic schedule in the Epic EHR to identify potential participants. In person screening and enrollment will occur during the clinic session.
Children who qualify for the program will be referred to People Working Cooperatively for a home assessment. The home assessors have completed the asthma home assessment training through; additionally, they are licensed to perform building assessments. The asthma home assessment will be done using guidance from the CDC https://www.cdc.gov/asthma/pdfs/home_assess_checklist_P.pdf (See appendix), building assessment will be done according to internal People Working Cooperatively protocols (See appendix). Based on the home assessment, People Working Cooperatively will develop an environmental asthma trigger mitigation plan and share this with the family. Together they will decide what interventions will be carried out.
For quality assurance and safety purposes, the coordinator will contact families monthly by phone for 6 months to assess their child’s asthma control, to monitor their progress through the referral and environmental abatement process and to collect feedback regarding their experience with the program.
The PI will meet with study staff and collaborators on an on-going (at least monthly) to monitor the progress of the pilot project. These meetings will review the “Methods, Equipment, Supplies, Staffing” status of the project to generate a list of action items that the team can work on to improve the effectiveness of the pilot project.