Black Emerging Adults With Uncontrolled Asthma: A Qualitative Study.

Rationale: Asthma morbidity and mortality are disproportionately high in the Black population, especially among Black emerging adults (BEAs) (age 18-30 years). Few studies have been done to identify unique challenges to asthma care in BEAs.

Objective: To assess the challenges and barriers to asthma care BEAs experience.

Impact of Goal Setting and Goal Attainment Methods on Asthma Outcomes.

Optimal use of goal-setting strategies in self-management efforts with high-risk individuals with asthma is not well understood. This study aimed to describe factors associated with goal attainment in an asthma self-management intervention for African American women with asthma and determine whether goal attainment methods proved beneficial to goal achievement and improved asthma outcomes. Data came from 212 African American women in the intervention arm of a randomized clinical trial evaluating a telephone-based asthma self-management program.

Program Implementation Approaches to Build and Sustain Health Care Coordination for Type 2 Diabetes.

Background: As more people enter the U.S. health care system under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), it is increasingly critical to deliver coordinated, high-quality health care.

Engaging faith-based resources to initiate and support diabetes self-management among African Americans: a collaboration of informal and formal systems of care.

Diabetes for Life (DFL), a project of Memphis Healthy Churches (MHC) and Common Table Health Alliance (CTHA; formerly Healthy Memphis Common Table [HMCT]), is a self-management program aimed at reducing health disparities among African Americans with type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in Memphis and Shelby County, Tennessee. This program is one of five national projects that constitute The Alliance to Reduce Disparities in Diabetes, a 5-year grant-funded initiative of The Merck Foundation. Our purpose is to describe the faith-based strategies supporting DFL made possible by linking with an established informal health system, MHC, created by Baptist Memorial Health Care.

Alliance system and policy change: necessary ingredients for improvement in diabetes care and reduction of disparities.

Reducing diabetes inequities requires system and policy changes based on real-life experiences of vulnerable individuals living with the condition. While introducing innovative interventions for African American, Native American, and Latino low-income people, the five community-based sites of the Alliance to Reduce Disparities in Diabetes recognized that policy changes were essential to sustain their efforts. Data regarding change efforts were collected from site leaders and examined against documents provided routinely to the National Program Office at the University of Michigan.

Beyond co-pays and out-of-pocket costs: perceptions of health-related financial burden in managing asthma among African American women.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to define perceptions of health-related financial burden based on the views of individuals who report these perceptions through qualitative approaches.

Methods: Four focus groups were conducted in Southeast Michigan with 26 African American women with asthma, recruited based on maximum variation sampling procedures. A semi-structured interview was employed by facilitators.

Self-management of multiple chronic conditions among African American women with asthma: a qualitative study.

Objective: African American women are disproportionately burdened by asthma morbidity and mortality and may be more likely than asthma patients in general to have comorbid health conditions. This study sought to identify the self-management challenges faced by African American women with asthma and comorbidities, how they prioritize their conditions and behaviors perceived as beneficial across conditions.

Methods: In-depth interviews were conducted with 25 African-American women (mean age 52 years) with persistent asthma and at least one of the following: diabetes, heart disease or arthritis.

Consideration of shared decision making in nursing: a review of clinicians' perceptions and interventions.

As the number of individuals with chronic illness increases so has the need for strategies to enable nurses to engage them effectively in daily management of their conditions. Shared decision making between patients and nurses is one approach frequently discussed in the literature. This paper reviews recent studies of shared decision making and the meaning of findings for the nurse-patient relationship.

The continuing problem of asthma in very young children: a community-based participatory research project.

Background: Asthma is a chronic health condition that has a disproportionate effect on low-income minority children who reside in large urban areas. African-American children report significantly higher rates than the general population of children and have more-severe asthma and poorer outcomes. This article describes the prevalence of asthma in a particularly vulnerable group: children aged 2-5 participating in Detroit Head Start programs.

Working with a Head Start population with asthma: lessons learned.

The Early Childhood Asthma Project involved asthma case identification in 35 Head Start centers in Detroit, MI, and attempted implementation of an intervention designed to help families manage a child's asthma more effectively. Surveys were distributed to the parents of all Head Start children (3408), and 2198 complete surveys were returned. Case detection found probable asthma in 30% of the children whose parent returned a sufficiently complete survey.