UC Merced

The California Central Valley has a higher-than-average incidence of childhood asthma and a severe shortage of healthcare providers, which, added to the demographic characteristics of the population, makes it a serious problem in public health. Community Health Workers Interventions have been used to reduce the disparities of the problem, with great results. The addition of peer support to interventions has the potential to increase the effectiveness of interventions without adding to the cost. This study uses a Mixed Methods approach to evaluate the readiness and desirability of such interventions in the community by accessing the needs, opinions, and receptivity of parents of asthmatic children and community stakeholders. The results show that the need for implementation of this kind of intervention in the community is indeed significant and a portion of the target population would be open to addition of peer support. Community stakeholders agree that the local asthma coalition would be a great catalyst to guide the community stakeholders to come together to bring about the materialization of this intervention, and that it is paramount that funding for this type of program should be obtained. The addition of peer support for the interventions also has the potential to involve researchers and students of community interventions to assist in implementation and evaluation of the performance of the program.

Keywords: Mixed Methods Research, Community Interventions, Community Health Workers Intervention, Peer Support, Asthma Education Intervention, Preventive Medicine.