# Telehealth-Enhanced Asthma Care for Home after the Emergency Room (TEACH-ER)

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER · 2024 · $654,762

## Abstract

Asthma is one of the most prevalent chronic diseases of childhood, and a leading cause of pediatric emergency
department (ED) visits in the US. Guideline-based asthma management, including treatment with daily
preventive medications, can reduce severe asthma flare-ups requiring acute healthcare services. Unfortunately,
many children in the ED with asthma are not adequately treated with preventive medications. Children from low
income and historically marginalized populations are disproportionately likely to be diagnosed with asthma and
require emergency asthma care, yet least likely to be prescribed preventive medication. Poor rates of primary
care follow-up after ED discharge result in missed opportunities to optimize treatment and home management
and reduce preventable morbidity. Our prior work has demonstrated that a school-based telemedicine
intervention for children 3-12 years can facilitate follow-up assessments by primary care providers after ED
discharge, and lead to increased prescriptions for preventive medications. Despite access to appropriate
treatment, however, the intervention did not lead to improved adherence or reduce symptoms and repeat ED
visits. Reducing morbidity for children with asthma in the ED will require a comprehensive guideline-based
approach that combines primary care follow-up and treatment with preventive medications, with patient-centered
education to support home management and adherence. To enhance home management, we also successfully
piloted an intervention of hospital-to-home educational support for children (5-13 years) admitted with asthma
that features pictorial materials, health literacy techniques, and a pair of in-home telehealth visits for educational
reinforcement after discharge. In response to NOT-OD-21-100: Improving Patient Adherence to Treatment and
Prevention Regimens to Promote Health (PA-20-183), we now propose a 2-group randomized trial to test the
TEACH-ER (Telehealth-Enhanced Asthma Care for Home after the Emergency Room) intervention vs an
enhanced care (EC) control group. The TEACH-ER intervention combines and expands upon our prior work,
and includes: 1) brief initial teaching in the ED; 2) in-home telehealth follow-up visit with primary care providers,
with a prompted recommendation for guideline-based preventive treatment and home delivery of prescriptions
with a pictorial action plan; 3) two additional in-home telehealth visits to deliver health literacy-informed asthma
education and home management support. We will enroll 430 children (ages 3-12 yrs) from the two dedicated
pediatric EDs in our region. We will assess the effectiveness of the program in reducing morbidity (e.g. repeat
ED visits or hospitalizations for asthma, symptom severity, quality of life), improving adherence, and improving
preventive asthma care. Participants will complete telephone follow-up assessments 3, 6, 9, and 12 months after
enrollment; we will also collective objective data on acute care use from the el...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10930101
- **Project number:** 5R01HL169466-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER
- **Principal Investigator:** Sean Michael Frey
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $654,762
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-09-15 → 2028-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10930101

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10930101, Telehealth-Enhanced Asthma Care for Home after the Emergency Room (TEACH-ER) (5R01HL169466-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10930101. Licensed CC0.

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