The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's Community Asthma Prevention Program (CAPP) began in November 1997. The primary goal of CAPP is to increase the knowledge and understanding of asthma and asthma management in the West Philadelphia area. The Home Intervention Study is a randomized controlled trial CAPP began in October 1998. In this study CAPP identifies poor, urban children with moderate to severe persistent asthma and removes common indoor asthma triggers from the bedrooms of approximately half of these children. Primary outcome measurements include hospital visits; emergency room visits, sick visits to the primary care physician and beta agonist use. Secondary outcomes include nighttime symptoms, missed school days and missed parent workdays. 250 families are enrolled into the study and are followed for one year post-enrollment. The staff includes four trained lay Home Visitors who visit these families once or twice a month to collect symptom diaries and to assess the child's bedroom for common asthma indoor triggers. These triggers include dust, cockroaches, mold, tobacco smoke and animal dander. Specific trigger avoidance techniques are taught to the families and supplies are given to the family in order to facilitate the mitigation of these triggers. The home visitor averages 90 visits each month. At each visit she/he assesses the child's bedroom for asthma triggers. The purpose of this presentation is to describe the implementation of a successful lay home visitor program and to report on the primary and secondary outcomes observed in this randomized control study.
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, the participant in this session will be able to: 1. List indoor asthma triggers and avoidance techniques. 2. Develop a home visitor program using lay health workers. 3. Assess effect of indoor asthma triggers on pediatric asthma.
Keywords: Asthma, Lay Health Workers
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Disclosure not received
Relationship: Not Received.