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Development and Usability Testing of the Mobile Childhood Asthma Management Program (mCHAMP) App: Sequential Mixed
Robert J Lucero1,2, Kristen Shear3, Andrea Fidler4
1Chicano Studies Research Center, School of Nursing, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
Background:
More than 6 million children in the United States have asthma, and more than 20% are clinically obese. Youth with asthma and obesity are susceptible to poor health outcomes, including greater asthma symptom severity and hospitalizations, reduced physical activity, and poorer quality of life. Mobile health technologies can increase access to chronic disease self-management interventions, and family members can be powerful influencers given their substantial control over a child's behavior and home environment.
Objective:
The Mobile Childhood Asthma Management Program (mCHAMP) app is based on the in-person Childhood Asthma Management Program (CHAMP) behavioral family intervention pilot trial of school-aged children with asthma and obesity. In this study, we translated the CHAMP content into digital content and conducted summative testing to measure the usability, learnability, and efficiency of the mCHAMP app.
Methods:
We applied a sequential mixed methods approach. The mCHAMP app targeted adult caregivers of children living with asthma and obesity aged 6 to 12 years. A consumer-centered approach was used to guide the identification of user requirements and conduct of summative usability testing. While the mCHAMP app is primarily caregiver facing, it is intended to connect caregivers with registered nurse (RN) interventionists. Therefore, we sought feedback from RNs as key stakeholders.
Results:
Caregivers (n=10) were female (n=10, 100%) and mostly African American (n=8, 80%), and half (n=5, 50%) had an annual household income of
Conclusions:
Caregivers expressed a desire for an intervention that was easy to use and could integrate into their busy family lives. We met this expectation based on the usability, learnability, and efficiency results of our study. The mCHAMP app has the potential to increase self-management for parents and pediatric patients with asthma with multimorbidity, which could improve patient and health system outcomes. The use of mCHAMP may also enable novel clinical outcome studies based on patient-reported data from the app.
International Registered Report Identifier (Irrid):
RR2-10.2196/13549.
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