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Category: Project

Description: Asthma affects over 6.2 million children in the U.S., particularly children who are African American and children whose parents have limited incomes and formal education. Yet, interventions that attempt to reduce asthma exacerbation by educating caregivers of asthmatic children are time and resource intensive and largely have enjoyed only modest success. We propose pausing intervention implementation and dissemination efforts to gain a thorough understanding of the basic scientific nature of caregivers’ proxy risk beliefs and how the beliefs interact with the social context to shape caregivers’ risk-reducing actions. By doing so, we can address three barriers to creating effective childhood asthma exacerbation interventions: (1) limited understanding of how caregivers think about asthma and the heuristics (judgment shortcuts) and biases that color caregiver beliefs, (2) limited evidence about how caregiver risk beliefs interact with the social context to influence decision making, and (3) limited evidence about how caregiver risk beliefs translate into their risk reduction behaviors and their child’s health. We propose filling these gaps in scientific knowledge by employing a mixed methods approach. We will conduct qualitative interviews of caregivers of children with asthma who reside in one of two underserved communities and a quantitative survey of caregivers recruited from online survey panels.