Children's perceptions of asthma: African American children use metaphors to make sense of asthma.

Introduction: Children's views of their illness often are absent in decisions that affect their lives. This research, which is a component of a larger study, reports how African American children described their asthma.

Method: The study's design was descriptive and longitudinal, using an ethnographic approach.

Integrating asthma prevention and control: the roles of the coalition.

Activities addressing pediatric asthma are often fragmented. Allies coalitions promoted integration, the alignment of concurrent asthma control activities across and within sectors. Systems integration describes activities from an organizational perspective.

Allies community health workers: Bridging the gap.

Allies Against Asthma coalitions each employ a community health worker (CHW) program as part of its community action plan. The structure and management of CHW programs vary in response to the resources and needs of the local community, as do the roles and characteristics of the CHWs hired. All programs utilize CHWs to provide community-based education and/or outreach to community members, primarily in their homes.

Engaging the community in coalition efforts to address childhood asthma.

For health improvement efforts to effectively address community needs, community members must be engaged in planning and implementing public health initiatives. For Allies Against Asthma's coalitions, the community included not only the subpopulation of individuals who suffer disproportionately from asthma but also the individuals and institutions that surround them. Through a quantitative self-assessment survey, informal discussion among coalition leadership, and interviews with key informants, data relevant to community engagement identified a number of important ways the Allies coalitions approached community involvement.

From formation to action: How allies against asthma coalitions are getting the job done.

Coalitions develop in and recycle through stages. At each stage (formation, implementation, maintenance, and institutionalization), certain factors enhance coalition function, accomplishment of tasks, and progression to the next stage. The Allies Against Asthma coalitions assessed stages of development through annual member surveys, key informant interviews of 16 leaders from each site, and other evaluation tools.

Community's voice in managing childhood asthma: the assessment phase of research.

This study was designed to investigate community beliefs about caring for childhood asthma and to elicit suggestions for interventions to improve asthmatic children's health. Focus groups were conducted with parents of children with asthma, children with asthma, school staff, and health care and childcare professionals. Data were analyzed for themes, such as disruption of normal living and having to work in a chaotic system, enabling researchers to posit a core belief for each group.

Lessons learned from a longitudinal qualitative family systems study.

Methodological issues encountered during all phases of a longitudinal qualitative family systems study are described. This article focuses on (1) separate researchers and sites, (2) recruitment and retention of study participants, (3) data collection concerns, (4) family variances, (5) conflicting roles of nurse and researcher, and (6) family disengagement. Achieving and maintaining scientific rigor in longitudinal qualitative studies can be challenging if consistent attention is not given to issues that surface during all phases of the study.

Characteristics of African American women caregivers of children with asthma.

Purpose: To describe the attributes and characteristics of African American women who were the primary caregivers of children with asthma.

Methods: Descriptive qualitative ethnography. Data collection consisted of formal interviews, participant observation, and fieldnotes.

Explanatory models of asthma from African-American caregivers of children with asthma.

Explanatory models (EMs) were collected from 20 African-American adult primary caregivers, in Seattle and New Orleans, who have children with asthma, to understand asthma from their perspective. Family EMs of asthma shed light on the meaning family members give to the illness, and how they make internally logical decisions related to their healthcare behavior. Study findings show that families have their own EMs of asthma.