Healthy Living, Healthy Learning, Healthy Lives: Using CBPR Approaches to Examine How Diverse Contexts Influence Children's Asthma

The burden of children’s asthma is greater among communities of color and the urban poor. Although researchers do not fully understand the causes of race disparities in asthma, they have learned that much of the risk is attributable to preventable social and environmental features of the environments where children live, learn, and play. Armed with that knowledge the Homewood Children’s Village partnered with the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work to assess the issue of children’s asthma in a low-income and majority African American section of Pittsburgh.  The goal is to gather specific information using CBPR methods across a range of domains to design and implement a community-wide intervention for our families.  This project engaged caregivers and youth through participatory concept mapping to document perceptions of social-environmental factors and asthma care-related factors impacting children with asthma. Next, youth collected tree leaves that were analyzed to assess outdoor environmental air quality and to gauge exposure to airborne toxins in our community.  Youth also traveled to learn about the leaves’ analysis in the lab providing a value to the research as well as to broadening their knowledge of career opportunities.  Last, the community/university research team met with community stakeholders who work with children (e.g. school staff, child care providers, sports team coaches, and public housing providers) to explore the challenges around children’s asthma in each of these contexts.   We will discuss each source for its contribution to the conceptualization and implementation of our impending healthographic, CBPR, asthma intervention.