Health equity has always been a passion for Eileen Wang, MD, MPH, allergist and immunologist at National Jewish Health. This passion motivated her to partner with Jennifer McCullough, MSEd, to develop a program to help enable students at Morgridge Academy to self-manage their asthma.
Wang and McCullough recently learned they will receive the Community Engagement Partnership Grant from the Colorado Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (CCTSI), which will fund the pilot study for their new program. The program aims to empower the students and help them build self-efficacy.
Morgridge Academy is a day school on the National Jewish Health campus for children in kindergarten through eighth grade diagnosed with chronic diseases. Seventy-three percent of Morgridge students have asthma. And many have multiple serious, chronic health conditions, which are difficult to manage in a typical school setting. The students in the school are disproportionately impacted by poverty, structural racism, and severe disease.
Wang, who is also an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, explained that, although the school nurses do a great job helping students manage their asthma while they’re in school, management often declines once they go home.
"The challenge is that when these students graduate, they're not well equipped to self-manage their asthma,” Wang said. “School staff also noticed that during summers and even weekends, students will come back, and they haven't taken their controller medications as prescribed. So, the school's goal is to provide better tools that address key barriers to increase the students’ and the community’s agency to self-manage."
Using a community-based participatory research model, the Morgridge Academy students, nurses, and staff will be heavily involved in all aspects of the research.
"I anticipate that our students and families will feel empowered on a number of levels after participating in this study,” said McCullough, director of education for the school. “I think they will feel more empowered to advocate for themselves with their own health issues and also on a community level."
Wang hopes this research will positively impact communities beyond Morgridge Academy by shedding light on how self-management interventions can be applied to historically marginalized communities that are often underrepresented in research.
Community Engagement and Health Equity Joint Pilot Award
Wang and McCullough plan to begin the 12-month pilot study this August once students return to school. The main goal is to determine the most effective intervention to help Morgridge Academy students self-manage their asthma.
"We want to ground it [study intervention] in the community's priorities and what they think will work so that it's sustainable and addresses what they want it to address,” said Wang. “The school nurses have been part of this since the very beginning. They were the ones to tell us what they need because they're the ones talking to the students to get a sense of what would be most beneficial for them.”
Focus groups with students and caregivers will determine what intervention the study team will implement. During these focus groups, the study team and Morgridge Academy staff, nurses and students will discuss community strengths, barriers to implementation, and key priorities to tailor this intervention to meet their needs.
Throughout the study, select students will participate in the Student Champions Program, where they will join the study team. This peer leadership program aims to foster students' interest in STEM and empower them to become leaders in their community. Wang explained that this was a priority for Morgridge Academy to re-energize community engagement.
"It's a pipeline program to get the students interested in STEM and engage them with the scientists, investigators, and school staff while also bringing the community and students together,” Wang explained. “It's meant to give them exposure to applied science and research, maybe even connect them with future mentors, have them build upon their agency and self-efficacy, and be a leader and spokesperson for the study.”
Next Steps and Potential Impact
After selecting and fine-tuning the school’s intervention and establishing the Student Champions Program with this pilot grant, Wang and McCullough plan to apply for a second grant that will allow them to implement this intervention.
Wang looks forward to continuing to grow the relationship with Morgridge Academy and their community, and to getting to know the students.
When she found out that she and McCullough had received the CCTSI pilot grant, she said, "It was the best news I've received in a long time! The school's enthusiasm for all of this -- the students, the nurses and the community, is amazing. Hopefully, we'll get them something that helps them and then disseminate it to help others in similar situations."
