$2.5M Grant to Support mHealth Asthma Interventions for Black Americans

A researcher at Detroit-based Wayne State University School of Medicine has received a $2.5 million grant to develop a mobile management program with the aim of improve asthma control in young Black Americans.

Karen MacDonell, PhD, associate professor of family medicine and public health sciences, won the five-year National Institutes of Health grant and will use it to support a research project called "Asthma and technology in emerging African American adults — the ATHENA Project."

The research team working on the project will examine four technology-based interventions that could help improve asthma control among Black Americans ages 18 to 30 years.

The interventions include a mobile four-session program called the Motivational Enhancement System for Asthma Management, which involves providing participants with personalized content based on activity level, daily experiences and goals.

Another intervention will center on supportive accountability administered by nurses using targeted mobile support, including Skype and phone calls, to provide education and promote self-efficacy.

In addition, the research team will examine a text messaging-based intervention that will provide reminders about asthma education, medication adherence and physical activity to participants, and a wearables-based intervention that will track physical activity to help meet goals defined by the participants.

The research team will assess the interventions and combinations that are most effective at improving asthma management.

"At the completion of the study, we will have an empirically-supported, optimized mobile asthma management intervention to improve asthma control for African American emerging adults," said MacDonell in the news release.

The researchers will recruit participants from American Lung Association Airway Clinical Research Center network sites and ambulatory care clinics at the Detroit Medical Center. They will collect data at three, six, and 12 months of the program with the aim of showing not only improved asthma control but also enhanced asthma management behaviors and quality of life.

Asthma disproportionately affects people of color in America. Compared to white people, Black people are 1.5 times more likely to have asthma and five times more likely to visit an emergency department due to asthma, according to a 2020 report by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.

Further, Black Americans are three times as likely to die from asthma as compared with white Americans.

Mobile health technologies have long been used to better control asthma. Major providers like Mount Sinai Health System and Geisinger Health System established mHealth programs targeting the condition back in 2018.

More recently, mHealth interventions have been employed to care for people living with Alzheimer’s Disease, tackle depression, and in research on long COVID.