Improving Asthma Care Together (IMPACT): A Shared Management Pilot Study

This study aims to iteratively develop, refine and test the Improving Asthma Care Together (IMPACT) Intervention for school-age children (7-11 years) with persistent asthma and their parents.

Asthma is one of the most common chronic conditions of childhood, affecting over six million US children. Asthma treatment relies on self-management including symptom monitoring and response, trigger avoidance, and timely and appropriate medication use. Unfortunately, fewer than 50% of children with asthma are adherent to asthma treatment regimens, leading to increased disease morbidity and mortality and potentially irreversible airway damage. Children with asthma are missing a voice in their own care. The school-age years (7-11) represent a natural transition in asthma management, as children must assume some responsibility for asthma-related care while they spend increasing time away from parents at school and other extracurricular activities. Yet, existing interventions focus on parents alone and use prescriptive approaches, telling the parent what to "do" to the child to manage their asthma. As a result, current strategies are failing to provide children with asthma and their families the tools they need to manage asthma successfully within the realities of their daily lives. Using a Human-Centered Design (HCD) framework, the investigators co-designed a tailored asthma shared management mobile health application that pairs the parent and child together as a team and facilitates the intentional transition of some asthma management to the child. The hypothesis is that by involving children in their own care, participants will improve asthma management in the present, but also establish lifelong successful self-management skills. The objective of the proposed study is to pilot test the Improving Asthma Care Together (IMPACT) mobile health application with parent-child dyads. Based on the preliminary data, the central hypothesis is that IMPACT will be effective for delivering a shared asthma management intervention for children and their parents.