Use of community health workers with inner-city children who have asthma.

Use of community health workers (CHWs) to obtain health, social, and environmental information from African-American inner-city children with asthma was one component of a larger intervention study designed to reduce morbidity in African-American children with asthma. A subset of 140 school-aged children with asthma was recruited and enrolled in a program to receive home visits by CHWs for the purposes of obtaining medical information and teaching basic asthma education to the families. Data obtained by the CHWs revealed low inhaled steroid use, high beta 2 agonist use, frequent emergency-room visits, decreased primary-care visits, and increased allergen and irritant exposure. Appropriately recruited and trained CHWs are effective in obtaining useful medical information from inner-city families with children with asthma and providing basic asthma education in the home.