Breathe With Ease: A Unique Approach to Managing Stress (BEAMS)

Uncontrolled asthma in at-risk youth responds well to guideline-based therapy when patients remain adherent to their management plans. Adherence to inhaled corticosteroids (ICS), when indicated for persistent or uncontrolled asthma, is a critical component of most asthma management plans, and other self-management practices such as trigger avoidance are similarly related to improved asthma outcomes. Adherence to self-management practices is mediated by multiple factors, including psychosocial stress of parents and their children. A targeted, culturally appropriate intervention to manage psychosocial stress among the parents of young, African American, and socioeconomically disadvantaged urban children with asthma who are receiving guideline-based care may improve asthma self-management, and therefore asthma outcomes. Our overall aim is to implement and evaluate a highly collaborative, multi-dimensional, culturally appropriate and community-based asthma intervention to augment existing guideline-based best practice. The intervention will target the parents of at-risk, urban, African American youth, and will employ individualized psychosocial stress management and peer support. We will conduct a single blind, prospective randomized controlled trial comparing the IMPACT DC Asthma Clinic's existing intervention of guideline-based clinical care, education, and short-term care coordination (usual care) to usual care plus parental stress management in a cohort of up to 200 parent-child dyads of AA youth aged 4-12 years.