Assessing outcomes from the Merck Childhood Asthma Network (MCAN): Challenges and results

Asthma continues to impose a high morbidity burden. MCAN is a major health promotion initiative focused on children with asthma. MCAN funded five sites to implement evidence based interventions in a community setting involving families and other stakeholders. MCAN presents a model that combines intensive patient with broad-based public health education and promotion activities in the community.

Located in metropolitan areas with complex social issues, the five sites serve low income populations with urgent asthma needs. In response to variations in needs and resources, the sites varied the types of interventions offered including school programs, physician training and community awareness events while maintaining intensive family intervention and care coordination components.

The diversity of interventions, real-world resource constraints, and the focus on intervention delivery rather than research required a mixed-methods design evaluation strategy. This paper presents a description of the process used to create a common data collection instrument including lessons learned for others who want to evaluate interventions that are not part of a randomized controlled trial.

The final common data collection instrument used a combination of questions from existing instruments adapted to the needs of this evaluation. The instrument collected measures of symptoms, quality of life, actions to control asthma in the house, school absences, and parent confidence.

The paper will present highlight from the results and a discussion of how the survey fit with the other parts of the evaluation: (1) qualitative research on the implementation process across sites; and (2) success meeting site-defined monitoring and evaluation targets.