Doctor of Nursing Practice , Case Western Reserve University, 2017, School of Nursing

Background: Asthma is a serious public health concern for children. Prevalence rates are at epidemic proportions in minority pediatric populations with alarming disparate rates for emergency department visits and hospitalizations. School based asthma education is a viable intervention to address barriers to asthma control and improve self management skills. Steeped in rich historical evidence, Open Airways for Schools is the leading school based asthma self management program to date. Although schools have been identified as the ideal environment to provide asthma self management education to children, there are notable and extensive barriers to effective implementation. This prevailing educational gap precludes the ability to adopt recommended school based asthma education. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to use existing data to determine the effectiveness of Open Airways for Schools in improving asthma self management and self knowledge skills in public elementary school children residing in high needs communities receiving instruction by trained nursing student Open Airways for Schools facilitators within a multi site academic practice partnership. Methodology: The creation of a multi site academic practice partnership served to address the educational gap by leveraging resources between a local asthma coalition, three baccalaureate nursing programs and several high needs public school districts on Long Island, New York. As a result of this enduring academic practice partnership, a data set of 377 existing validated pre and post-test Open Airways questionnaires was collected between September 2013 and December 2015 but never analyzed for significance. Findings: In this one group pretest/posttest design for existing data, paired t test analyses revealed statistically significant improvement for both asthma self management skills and self knowledge (p = .000). Greatest increases for asthma self management included the ability to avoid tri (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Deborah Lindell DNP, MSN, RN, CNE, ANEF (Committee Chair) Subjects: Education; Health Care; Health Education; Nursing; Public Health Education

Master of Science (MS), Wright State University, 2019, Computer Science

Asthma, chronic pulmonary disease, is one of the major health issues in the United States. Given its chronic nature, the demand for continuous monitoring of patient's adherence to the medication care plan, assessment of their environment triggers, and management of asthma control level can be challenging in traditional clinical settings and taxing on clinical professionals. A shift from a reactive to a proactive asthma care can improve health outcomes and reduce expenses. On the technology spectrum, smart conversational systems and Internet-of-Things (IoTs) are rapidly gaining popularity in the healthcare industry. By leveraging such technological prevalence, it is feasible to design a system that is capable of monitoring asthmatic patients for a prolonged period and empowering them to manage their health better. In this thesis, we describe kBot, a knowledge-driven personalized chatbot system designed to continuously track medication adherence of pediatric asthmatic patients (age 8 to 15) and monitor relevant health and environmental data. The outcome is to help asthma patients self manage their asthma progression by generating trigger alerts and educate them with various self-management strategies. kBOT takes the form of an Android application with a frontend chat interface capable of conversing both text and voice-based conversations and a backend cloud-based server application that handles data collection, processing, and dialogue management. The domain knowledge component is pieced together from the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, Mayoclinic, and Verywell Health as well as our clinical collaborator. Whereas, the personalization aspect is derived from the patient's history of asthma collected from the questionnaires and day-to-day conversations. The system has been evaluated by eight asthma clinicians and eight computer science researchers for chatbot quality, technology acceptance, and system usability. kBOT achieved an overall technology acceptance (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Amit Sheth Ph.D. (Advisor); Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan Ph.D. (Committee Member); Valerie Shalin Ph.D. (Committee Member); Maninder Kalra M.D., Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science; Health Care Management; Information Technology

Master of Science (MS), Wright State University, 2018, Computer Science

Asthma is a high-burden chronic inflammatory disease with prevalence in children with twice the rate compared to adults. It can be improved by continuously monitoring patients and their environment using the Internet of Things (IoT) based devices. These sensor data streams so obtained are essential to comprehend multiple factors triggering asthma symptoms. In order to support physicians in exploring causal associations and finding actionable insights, a visualization system with a scalable cloud infrastructure that can process multimodal sensor data and Patient Generated Health Data (PGHD) is necessary. In this thesis, we describe a cloud-based asthma management and visualization platform that integrates personalized PGHD from kHealth kit and outdoor environmental observations from web services. When applied to data from an individual, the tool assists in analyzing and explaining symptoms using "personalized" causes, monitor disease progression, and improve asthma management. The front-end visualization was built with Bootstrap Framework and Highcharts. Google's Firebase and Elasticsearch engine were used as back-end storage to aggregate data from various sources. Further, Node.js and Express Framework were used to develop several Representational State Transfer services useful for the visualization.

Committee: Amit Sheth Ph.D. (Advisor); Krishnaprasad Thirunarayanan Ph.D. (Committee Member); Maninder Kalra Ph.D. (Committee Member); Valerie Shalin Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science; Health

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2011, Allied Medical Professions

College students are a unique population with specific needs in regards to asthma self-management. During this transition period, adolescents face many challenges that can interfere with their ability to manage their asthma effectively. The purpose of this study is to describe Millennial college students' level of asthma control and their attitudes and perceptions of how well their asthma is managed. A survey of asthma control was used to describe students' perceived level of asthma control and their actual level control. In addition, a focus group was used to describe resources college students with asthma utilize for disease management and additional resources or adaptations that are necessary to better meet students' needs. This study found that the majority of first-year college students with asthma who have the perception that they are in control of their asthma are actually well controlled. However, there is still an opportunity to provide education to more closely align students' perceptions about their asthma with their actual level of control. Data obtained from the focus group sessions revealed millennial first-year college students with asthma have a significant misunderstanding of asthma “control” and most do not recognize the basic processes of the disease. Students also face a variety of barriers and limitations that prevent appropriate access to care, as well as difficulties they experience adapting to environmental changes after coming to college, such as climate changes, living arrangements, or developing new routines.

Committee: Georgianna Sergakis PhD (Advisor); Sarah Varekojis PhD (Committee Member); Jill Clutter PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Adult Education; Community College Education; Health; Health Care; Health Education; Health Sciences; Higher Education