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Awardee
National Center for Primary Care
Morehouse School of Medicine
Atlanta, Georgia
Target Population
The target population for this project is community health center clinicians and asthma patients within the Southeast Regional Clinicians' Network (SECRN). The network includes 142 Federally funded community and migrant health centers in eight southern states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee). Through the successful education and outreach to clinicians in 16 of these sites, it is intended that a comparable proportion of the 1.68 million individual patients served by the SECRN will be reached. Approximately two-thirds of SECRN's patient population falls below the poverty level and 56 percent represent the African American and Hispanic populations. It is anticipated that more than 2,000 patients with asthma will be seen.
Proposed Strategy
This is a clinically focused strategy to provide community health and migrant health center physicians with appropriate medical resources, training, and re-designed processes to impact health disparities and overall asthma morbidity in the southern region.
Specifically, the program intervention is targeted to providing clinicians the resources required to provide optimal care to high-risk asthma patients from the surrounding communities. These resources include medications and tools for patient self-monitoring and self-management. Clinicians will receive training consistent with the National Asthma Education and Prevention Program's Guidelines.
The proposed strategy will focus on two NAEPP goals:
- #2 -- To diagnose and manage asthma; and
- #4 -- To prevent recurrent exacerbation of asthma.
Anticipated Outcome
In keeping with the clinical focus of the intervention, the anticipated outcome of the program is improved asthma care exhibited by reduced hospitalizations and emergency room visits.
By evaluating clinical data including patient questionnaires, chart audits and hospital and emergency room data, the investigators intend to develop a reproducible model for changing clinician behaviors and changing systems of care within community and migrant health care settings. The ultimate goal of the project is to move clinicians along a continuum of care from providing "usual care" to providing "optimal care" for their asthma patients.