Hilltop to Partner on Asthma Study

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has awarded a three-year, $750,000 grant to UMBC’s Hilltop Institute and Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research (MIPAR), as well as the Green and Healthy Homes Initiative™(GHHI), to conduct a cost benefit analysis of the reduction in asthma and associated Medicaid expenditures resulting from the implementation of GHHI’s interventions. GHHI is a national program spearheaded by the Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning with the aim of integrating health-based housing interventions with weatherization to create access to healthy homes for children in low-income neighborhoods. The UMBC study will focus on GHHI interventions in the homes of low-income families with asthma-diagnosed children in Baltimore City. The project will evaluate the extent to which GHHI interventions affect asthma morbidity and health care utilization costs, school absences, utility costs, and work-loss days for parents or caregivers of children with asthma. The study will also examine how different levels of GHHI interventions affect post-intervention resident health and overall non-medical and energy cost savings. The interdisciplinary research team includes Principal Investigator David Salkever of the UMBC Department of Public Policy/MIPAR, Co-Investigator Michael Abrams of The Hilltop Institute, researchers from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Co-Principal Investigator Ruth Ann Norton, Executive Director of the Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning/GHHI.

August 28, 2013