Research
Childhood asthma is well defined as a major health problem, especially among low-income and minority children. The focus of the ZAP Asthma project is that of a community based demonstration project designed to test the effectiveness of environmental control and health education strategies to decrease asthma morbidity.

A 16 member consortium formed a participatory research model to implement a two part community based prevention program to improve the quality of life for children with asthma. The community education –service component aims to improve asthma management. The community intervention component hired outreach workers from among residents of the study area to assist participants to reduced asthma-related exposures.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Environmental Health has taken the protocol intervention, developmental lead. The community based environmental interventions include reduction of dust mites, cleaning of air and heat systems, smoking cessation for adults, caretaker education and cockroach control. The community and other partners have been involved in the protocol development process, including the human subjects and peer review efforts.

Evaluation
The ZAP Asthma participatory model is designed to evaluate the coordination of the prevention intervention with a clinical intervention. The uniqueness of this model centers on the design of prevention and primary care components and its relationship to other components. The model examines the impact of the demonstration on a number of critical outcome measures related to childhood asthma, such as the number of emergency room visits, number of avoidable hospitalizations, and number of school days lost.