Community Based Participatory Research to Assess the Occupational Childhood Asthma

Abstract

Community Action Against Asthma is community-based participatory research that assesses the effects of outdoor and indoor air quality on exacerbation of asthma in children, and tests household- and neighbours’ interventions to reduce exposure to environmental asthma triggers. The Community Action Against Asthma project grew out of an already existing community-academic partnership, the Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Centre. For the intervention, we used a staggered randomized research design in which one half of the participants received the household intervention immediately after the collection of baseline data and the other half received the intervention the following year. Annually, we conducted a household environmental assessment and administered questionnaires with the caregivers and children to assess health outcomes e.g., quality of life and asthma symptoms and psychosocial factors and social support to evaluate the impact of the household intervention on childhood asthma outcomes.