
Strategies to ensure school-aged children receive their asthma medicine each day is the focus of a study scheduled to begin in 2024. The study by the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School will get underway at pediatric clinics across the state.
The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute is funding the study with a $3.8 million grant. The study will follow an earlier study, Asthma Link, led by Michelle K. Trivedi, MD, MPH, associate professor of pediatrics, pediatric pulmonologist and asthma clinical researcher. Asthma Link coordinates the efforts of school nurses, pediatricians and families to improve daily medication adherence.
“I see children suffering from repeated visits to the hospital and ER because they are not receiving their daily asthma medicine. I am excited to examine and disseminate practical strategies to improve this problem,” Dr. Trivedi said in a university press release.
Dr. Trivedi and her team will test several approaches, including one in which families will receive written guidance to help their child use their daily asthma inhaler and another in which families will receive written support as well as supervised support at school from the child’s school nurse. This second strategy, Asthma Link, links pediatric practices with schools to allow for school-supervised asthma therapy under real-world conditions. The goal is to determine how effective each approach is at improving asthma symptoms for children.
The study includes 14 pediatric practices, schools and families in Massachusetts to serve children with difficult-to-control asthma symptoms in grades K through 8. The trial will enroll 350 parent–child dyads.
In 2020, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that nearly 8% of school-aged children in Massachusetts had asthma. Of that group, as few as 20% of children are taking their prescribed daily medication, leading to asthma symptoms and asthma attacks.
Dr. Trivedi previously led a pilot trial to determine study feasibility via the Asthma Link program and other supports for pediatric practices with 66 school-aged children in Central Massachusetts.
For the upcoming study, Dr. Trivedi and her team will continue to focus on engaging and recruiting children and families often underrepresented in research.
“This is critical in our work. If we do not engage children and families in large clinical trials from low-income and minoritized backgrounds, as researchers and clinicians, we simply cannot know if our best and most innovative strategies work for them. Since these are the children suffering from the worst asthma symptoms, we want to ensure they are included,” Dr. Trivedi said.