Peer mentor training to reduce hospitalizations for children with asthma

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant The overall goal of this SBIR Fast Track application is to develop a web based program to train peer mentors to guide parents of children with asthma on methods to reduce ED visits and hospitalizations There are million children with asthma Asthma is the cause of million missed days of school million outpatient visits ED visits and hospitalization visits in Recent work by Fisher et al has shown in a year randomized clinical trial that trained peers mentors lay individuals from the community can be effective in reducing hospitalizations for asthmatic children from percent to percent pandlt The training protocol used in the clinical trial involved months of in person training In person training is too slow and expensive to allow for general dissemination of this effective method for reducing hospitalizations in children with asthma To overcome this barrier to dissemination we are developing a web based training program In Phase I our Specific Aim is to develop a web based tool for training peer mentors such that the mentors meet the same qualification standards achieved in the study Following training we will use Mentor to andquot developed by InquisitHealth to allow the peer mentors to coach parents of children with asthma Mentor to andquot allows for HIPAA compliant phone conversations between a parent and a peer mentor that are easily managed tracked and integrated into clinical workflow The proposed platform web training plus Mentor to andquot should allow for the creation of a scalable cost effective peer mentor workforce to meet the challenge of reducing asthma related hospitalizations In Phase II our Specific Aim is to test this software with a health plan and a health system in a randomized clinical trial To achieve our Phase I Specific Aim we will carry out the following three Tasks Task Conduct Focus Groups Task Iterative Development of our Web based Training Program Prototype for Peer Mentors Task Evaluate Peer Training Efficacy with Peer Mentor Trainees Phase I Test of Feasibility percent of mentors should meet the threshold set for both passing the written percent correct and simulated patient exams percent of objectives met percent of mentors should be satisfied with the Process Measure Tests score at or on a Likert scale with being completely satisfied To achieve our Phase II Specific Aim we will carry out the following four Tasks Task Gather and Utilize Feedback to Improve Training System Task Develop Easy Access Material for Peer Mentors Task Develop Systems and Automation to Support Peer Mentoring Deployment Task Evaluate Efficacy of our Web Trained Peer Mentors Phase II Criteria for Success Reduce hospitalizations by at least percent as in Fisher et al PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE There are million children percent of US children under the age of with asthma Asthma is the cause of hospitalization visits in This is an application to develop a method to greatly reduce such hospitalizations