Redesigning Ambulatory Care Delivery to Enhance Asthma Control in Children

Summary

The investigators have developed a tool to facilitate asthma self-management in children, the electronic-AsthmaTracker (e-AT). The e-AT changes ambulatory asthma care delivery to a new model that is continuous and proactive, focusing on prevention and control, rather than reactive and focusing on management of asthma attacks. The e-AT 1) engages parents in weekly monitoring of their child's chronic asthma symptoms, 2) guides parents to recognize warning signs of asthma attacks in order to prompt appropriate interventions and timely visits to Primary Care Providers, and 3) provides Primary Care Providers with real-time, objective patient data to assess the effectiveness of asthma therapy and prompt adjustments. In a preliminary study of the paper-based version of the AT, frequent users had significantly fewer emergency department (ED) and hospital visits. Parent comments during the e-AT pilot testing revealed that the tool was useful in helping them manage their child's asthma and were interested in assessing the tool's effectiveness and in identifying and addressing barriers to their sustained use of the e-AT.

Improving asthma control in children will be facilitated by broad e-AT dissemination, and by identifying and addressing critical factors that contribute to parent sustained participation in self-management. The investigators propose to assess the effectiveness of the new ambulatory care model supported by the e-AT and conduct an e-AT process evaluation, assessing barriers and facilitators of sustained parent use. The investigators will engage parents throughout this study to identify and address themes that matter to them. The target population is children with persistent asthma, ages 2-17 years. The investigators have engaged 10 parents since conception of this project, from the planning to design and validation of the paper-AT, and the design and pilot testing of the e-AT. Input from parents was received through 3 iterative focus groups (one for the paper-AT and 2 for the e-AT) and facilitated discussions to inform the development of this proposal including research objectives and outcome measures. In addition, the investigators have recruited other key stakeholders for whom the results of the research will be relevant.

Conditions

• Asthma

Interventions

OTHER

Experimental: Standard vs Intensive e-AT Intervention

Patients will be self-monitoring their symptoms weekly using the e-AT, either the Standard or Intensive versions of the e-AT, completing the Asthma Control Test. As patients complete their assessments each week, the clinics will be able to see how each patient is doing, and follow-up when a patient is showing high symptoms for that week, potentially avoiding Emergency Room visit, and/or hospitalization.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Utah

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Flory Nkoy, MD, MS, MPH · University of Utah

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

2 Years

Max Age

17 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2013-08-31

Primary Completion

2016-12-31

Completion

2016-12-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations