NM: Assessment of Continuing Education and Training Needs for Medical Professionals Caring for Children With Asthma
State: NM

Skill Area: Needs Assessment

Internship summary
The Asthma Program has been funded by a cooperative agreement with CDC since 2000. In September 2009, CDC awarded the Asthma Program $1.75 million for the next five years. The Asthma Program’s goals are to Reduce the burden of asthma in New Mexico by: assessing the scope and magnitude of the asthma problem; providing asthma education/training for health care professionals, patients, families, schools, employees, employers, and communities; improving access to and delivery of asthma health care; and reducing exposures to environmental factors that may trigger or cause asthma episodes.

Purpose
To decrease and eventually eliminate the disparity in asthma hospitalizations and emergency department visits that exists between Southeastern New Mexico and the rest of the state.

Goals
1. Increase asthma self management education and improve prescription patterns toward consistency with the asthma practice guidelines (NAEPP ERP-3 Guidelines)

2. To reduce the rates of hospitalization and emergency department visit rates due to asthma in Southeastern New Mexico.

Objectives
Analyze BRFSS asthma callback data to evaluate progress toward the following goals:

1) Increased asthma self management education among children with asthma
2) Improvement in prescription patterns by clinicians

Data or analytic tasks and activities involved
Analyzing the BRFSS Asthma Call-Back Surveys. The survey includes questions on medical treatment, healthcare utilization, prescription medications, school days missed, and asthma management. The intern would analyze the available years of data in order to assess needs and measure progress in asthma self-management education and health care provider (pediatrician) training.

Required data or analytic skills
Experience with descriptive statistics (rate calculation, percents, confidence intervals, working with weighted datasets, etc.) Advanced beginner to intermediate level knowledge of STATA so that the intern can do the above, generate new variables, create index variables, concatenate subsequent years of data, etc.

Begin date
May or June, 2010

Housing assistance available?
student will need to do his or her own research on housing, but we can assist in helping them figure out which options are closest to public transportation, work site, etc...

Public transportation available?
There is a bus system in Santa Fe. Also, student can live in Albuquerque or Rio Rancho and commute via the Railrunner Express Train.