Session: The Community Healthcare for Asthma Management and Prevention of Symptoms (CHAMPS) Study – Key Findings (Society for Prevention Research 23rd Annual Meeting)

The goal of this symposium is to present findings from a multi-year, multi-site translational and implementation research project titled Community Healthcare for Asthma Management and Prevention of Symptoms (CHAMPS) and to discuss CHAMPS in the context of future research.  The symposium supports the conference theme of dissemination and implementation science and brings together a team of researchers and practitioners who were essential in the development, implementation, and success of CHAMPS.  

In this study, we combined childhood asthma counseling and environmental interventions proven effective in previous NIH-funded clinical trials, the National Cooperative Inner-City Asthma Study (NCICAS) and the Inner-City Asthma Study (ICAS), and a third study, Head-off Environmental Asthma in Louisiana (HEAL). These studies demonstrated that participant-tailored interventions reduce asthma morbidity.  Through a process of consensus building, we adapted a hybrid of these interventions for use in primary care clinics located in medically underserved areas (FQHCs).  We recruited participants ages 5-12 years with poorly controlled, moderate-to-severe asthma to ensure comparability with previous studies.  Unlike the earlier clinical trials, which limited eligibility to inner-city children in stable housing, CHAMPS enrolled participants regardless of housing situation (e.g., temporary/shared homes) and location (e.g., urban/rural).  We collaborated with 3 FQHCs in Arizona, Michigan, and Puerto Rico to enroll children and implement the CHAMPS intervention but otherwise granted them discretion to make decisions about staffing, patient flow and other process determinations, while tracking what those entailed.  We also invited 3 additional FQHCs to recruit and enroll children in a comparison group that did not receive the intervention.

In the first abstract, we describe the overall study approach and discuss how we leveraged clinical, cost, and process data to provide a fuller picture of implementation success and to identify lessons for future implementation and dissemination of the CHAMPS intervention.  In the second abstract, we present the results from clinical effectiveness analyses and the impact of the intervention on asthma symptoms and other clinical outcomes. In the final abstract, we focus on cost-effectiveness analyses and the effect of the intervention on the utilization of emergency room and hospital inpatient care and associated spending. 

Formal presentations will conclude with a summary statement from the session facilitator and will be followed by a moderated discussion. We expect that our study’s innovative approach, its findings, and the lessons learned from its implementation will promote lively discussion and generate ideas for the next generation of asthma implementation and translational research.