PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
RESEARCH: The goal of this proposal is to refine and pilot test Asthma Link, an innovative, low-
cost intervention that links pediatric practices, schools, and families to deliver school nurse-supervised
asthma therapy to children with poorly controlled asthma in real-world settings. While there are successful
examples of school-supervised asthma therapy to improve asthma medication adherence in research
settings, this intervention has not been routinely adopted in practice. This is likely due to costly and
resource intense protocols that have not yet leveraged the established infrastructure of the clinical system
and schools. To address this, our team developed a new model, Asthma Link, in which pediatric providers
identify eligible children as part of their routine practice and initiate supervised asthma therapy with the
school nurse; the family picks up and delivers the asthma medication to the school: and the school nurse
supervises daily asthma medication use. This intervention leverages established infrastructure and
requires minimal resources to operate, enhancing sustainability in a real-world setting. Our preliminary
studies show that Asthma Link reduces asthma-related emergency room visits yet qualitative interviews
showed the protocol needs refinement for real-world use. We propose to refine the Asthma Link protocol for
real-world implementation and then pilot test the refined protocol in a cluster RCT of 4 pediatric practices (n=72
parent-child dyads). If proven to be effective, Asthma Link could become the standard of care for children
with high-risk asthma, with the power to transform practice, even within limited resources.
CANDIDATE: Michelle Trivedi, MD, MPH is a pediatric pulmonologist, Associate Professor of
Pediatrics at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) in the Division of Pediatric Pulmonology
at UMass Memorial Children's Medical Center and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Population and
Quantitative Health Sciences at UMMS. She received a Master's of Public Health in Clinical Effectiveness at
the Harvard School of Public Health. She has conducted rigorous observational and epidemiologic
investigations in pediatric asthma; and with a UMMS KL2 Award has performed two critical pilot studies of
Asthma Link, which build the foundation for this K23 proposal. Dr. Trivedi will utilize the K23 Award to become
an independent clinician-scientist with expertise in developing and implementing low-cost, sustainable
interventions for children with asthma and to ultimately impact state and national asthma policies.
ENVIRONMENT: Dr. Trivedi will perform her research and career development at UMMS. Her primary
mentor, Dr. Lori Pbert and secondary mentors, Dr. Wanda Phipatanakul, Dr. Milagros Rosal and Dr. Stephenie
Lemon, are all leaders in their respective fields of preventive health, health behavior change trials, pediatric
asthma clinical trials, community-engaged research and implementation science. Each of Dr. Trivedi's mentors
has an excellent track record of mentoring young investigators towards independent research careers.