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UNC gets $1.9 million to get teens more involved in managing asthma

 

A video and question prompt list will encourage teens with asthma to ask more questions at doctor visits, while suggesting parents to listen more and talk less

 

(Chapel Hill, N.C.—Nov. 5, 2014) – Teens with asthma aren’t great at taking an active role during doctor visits. A team at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill believes changing that is a matter of asking the right questions, so they have developed a set of questions teens can use as prompts for discussing their asthma with their physician.

 

The three-year, $1.9 million project, funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, aims to improve the existing question prompt list to see if leads to better communication and results for the patients. The goal is to make teens more effective at managing their asthma, which results in better control of their condition, fewer missed school days and better quality of life.

 

“We want to find ways to activate the teens and get the parents to be quieter,” said Betsy Sleath, the George H. Cocolas Distinguished Professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy who will lead the project. “Teens don’t want to be different from their peers, and it’s not uncommon for them to be in denial about their asthma. They may stop taking their long-term control meds and rely only on quick-relief meds, which don’t keep asthma under control. This leads to problems.”

 

In previous studies, Sleath has found that only 13 percent of teens asked questions about asthma management during medical visits. And 78 percent of teens said they had at least one problem with their asthma medication yet only 11 percent brought those problems up during visits to the doctor.

 

Teens gave Sleath a number of reasons for remaining passive at the doctor’s office:

  • “The doctor doesn’t stop talking. “
  • “My parents ask the questions.”
  • “I don’t remember what to ask.”

 

To get teens more involved during their asthma visits, the team will use input from focus groups of physicians, parents and teens to improve their question prompt list and then to develop a short video in English and Spanish that emphasizes the importance of engaging teens in meaningful conversation during doctor visits. They will then measure whether or not the video gets the teens to use the question prompts and whether the intervention helps them keep their asthma under control.

 

The team will enroll 360 African American, Latino and Caucasian children between the ages of 11 and 17 in the study. Teens in the intervention group will watch the video developed by Sleath’s team before their doctor visit and will be given the list of questions so they can check which questions they want to ask. Those in the control group will receive their usual care.

 

The medical visits will be audiotaped, and the team will interview each subject and measure lung function immediately after that first visit and 6 and twelve months thereafter. The study will assess how well the participants are controlling their asthma and their quality of life.

 

Betsy Sleath

Betsy Sleath is also the chair of the School’s Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy. She is director of the Child and Adolescent Health Program at the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, as well as co-director of the Community Academic Resources for Engaged Scholarship core of the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute, home of the National Institutes of Health Clinical and Translational Science Awards program at UNC-Chapel Hill.

 

PCORI

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute is an independent, nonprofit organization authorized by Congress in 2010 to fund comparative clinical effectiveness research that will provide patients, their caregivers, and clinicians with the evidence-based information needed to make better-informed health and health-care decisions. PCORI is committed to seeking input from a broad range of stakeholders to guide its work. It has approved $671 million to support 360 research studies and initiatives since it began funding research in 2012. For more information about PCORI funding, visit http://pcori.org.

 

The award has been approved pending completion of a business and programmatic review by PCORI staff and issuance of a formal award contract to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

 

-Carolina-

 

Eshelman School of Pharmacy contact: David Etchison, (919) 966-7744, david_etchison@unc.edu

Office of Communications and Public Affairs contact: Thania Benios, (919) 962-8596, thania_benios@unc.edu

 

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