The impact of integrating community health workers into the patient-centered medical home.

Objectives: Establishing patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs) that deliver comprehensive care can be challenging for practices serving diverse populations. Integrating community health workers (CHWs) as members of the care team is one approach to deliver such care; however, little is known about this process. We study an approach of integrating CHWs into PCMHs with predominantly Latino, pediatric asthma patients and examine the impact on care delivery.

Outcomes from a cross-site evaluation of a comprehensive pediatric asthma initiative incorporating translation of evidence-based interventions.

This article reports on an evaluation of the Merck Childhood Asthma Network, Inc. (MCAN) initiative using pooled cross-site data on patient-reported outcomes pre- and postintervention to quantify the changes experienced by children in five program sites supported by the network. The results show a consistent pattern of improvement across all measured outcomes, including symptoms, hospital and emergency department use, school absences, and caregiver confidence.