Community Health Workers Improving Childhood Asthma through Home Visiting Across New England

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) awarded Health Resources in Action, Inc. a Health Care Innovation grant in May 2012 to implement a community health worker home visiting program to improve the health and care of Medicaid-enrolled children with poorly controlled asthma at risk of utilizing expensive urgent care across New England. This award supports the New England Asthma Innovation Collaborative (NEAIC) that consists of eight intervention sites located in four New England states. In this intervention, CHWs provide three home visits over the course of several months in which they conduct an environmental assessment to determine how to best manage asthma triggers and provide environmental intervention supplies. CHWs also deliver asthma self-management education at the home visits. NEAIC is in its second year and is seeing overall improvements in: environment asthma triggers in the home, quality of life, health care utilization and health outcomes. This presentation will outline the home intervention protocols and the role of the CHW in this program, discuss challenges, successes and lessons learned, and present intervention outcomes to date.