Evaluation of Diverse Community Asthma Interventions: Balancing Health Outcomes with Developing Community Capacity for Evidence-Based Program Measurement.

The challenge of evaluating community asthma management programs is complicated by balancing the emphasis on health outcomes with the need to build community process capacity for conducting and monitoring evidence-based programs. The evaluation of a Georgia Childhood Asthma Management Program, a Healthcare Georgia Foundation-supported initiative for multiple diverse programs and settings, provides an example of an approach and the results that address this challenge. A "developmental evaluation" approach was applied, using mixed methods of quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis, to assess the progress of community asthma prevention programs in building community within the context of: where the community is starting, community-level systems changes, and the community's progress toward becoming more outcome measurement oriented and evidence based.

VOC and particulate emissions from commercial cigarettes: analysis of 2,5-DMF as an ETS tracer.

Emissions of particulate matter (PM) and a broad suite of target volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in total, main-stream (MS) and side-stream (SS) smoke emissions are measured for six types of commercial cigarettes. The suitability of 2,5-dimethyl furan (DMF) as a tracer for environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is investigated using laboratory results and a field study of 47 residences. Over 30 VOCs were characterized in cigarette smoke, including several that have not been reported previously.

Quantifying the availability of clay surfaces in soils for adsorption of nitrocyanobenzene and diuron.

Coverage of clay surfaces by soil organic matter (SOM) may limitthe efficacy of the soil mineral fractions for adsorption of organic contaminants and pesticides. Two methods were scrutinized for quantitatively assessing the availability of clay surfaces in a smectitic Webster A-horizon soil for sorption of p-nitrocyanobenzene (p-NCB) and diuron. One method, described previously, involves the summation of independent contributions of SOM and swelling clays to sorption of organic solutes.