The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA

Abstract #43150

Karen M. Drezner, MEd¹, Shawn K. Bowen, MD¹, Amy Rowe, PNP¹, Diane E. McLean, PhDMPH¹, Candice Manzano, BA¹, and Roy Grant². (1) Division of Community Pediatrics, Childhood Asthma Initiative, The Children's Hospital at Montefiore/AECOM, 317 East 64th Street, New York, NY 10021, 212-535-9779, kdrezner@montefiore.org, (2) Division of Community Pediatrics, Children's Hospital at Montefiore, 317 East 64th Street, New York, NY 10021

Introduction: Childhood asthma has taken on epidemic proportions, especially in medically underserved communities where families may be at extremely high risk. Successful approaches to treating and educating these families requires comprehensive and appropriate assessment. Methods: 78 parents in two homeless shelters met with a NP for individual family education sessions after asthma diagnoses were determined by Childhood Asthma Initiative clinical staff. The CAI is a multidisciplinary asthma program serving homeless children in NYC (N=472), providing primary care-based asthma diagnosis and treatment based on the NAEPP guidelines, asthma education and psychosocial support. The NP utilized an Educational Assessment Tool to determine necessary intervention. Results: Preliminary results from the first 20 families that received educational assessments demonstrated that parents provided limited information to open-ended questions about their children’s asthma, yet revealed considerably more upon focused probing. For instance, only 10% of parents mentioned waking up at night coughing or wheezing as a symptom, yet with probing an additional 86% noted difficulty in this area. Only 5% mentioned rib retractions initially, but another 24% responded positively to probing about this issue. Conclusion: These findings suggest that first responses to open-ended questions reveal only a fraction of the entire experience of asthma in these families and important information may be missed. Evaluation design and implementation should take into account the content and applicability of questions for this population, appropriate administration techniques, and the role asthma plays within the context of homeless families’ lives.

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will acquire information on findings from an educational assessment tool utilized in a multi-disciplinary asthma program.
• Attendees will be better equipped to construct viable and appropriate evaluations to gather information from underserved populations such as the homeless.
• Participants will evaluate various strategies for comprehensive assessment efforts to support the needs of underserved communities. Participants will discuss best practices, and challenges that exist. Participants will be able to identify key considerations for developing and implementing assessment protocol for interventions with homeless families.

Keywords: Homeless Health Care, Asthma

Related Web page: www.childrenshealthfund.org

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.