Future Projects
This page contains descriptions of future projects under development at the Seattle Quality of Life Group.
Table of Contents
Health Literacy
Project First Impressions II
Parents and Child Weight
Pediatric GERD Quality of Life
Health Literacy
The goal of this project will be to characterize and define the components of health literacy from the perspectives of homeless and disconnected youth in diverse settings in urban areas of Western Washington State. Also, to assess, design and develop an intervention to improve health literacy in homeless and disconnected youth and develop a culturally appropriate self-reported computer-assisted measure of health literacy for individual and group use with homeless and disconnected youth.
Project First Impressions II
The purpose of this project will be to develop a multi-media social skills intervention to teach social skills to youth with facial differences who are in middle school (approximately ages 11-14).
Parents and Child Weight
Many overweight children have at least one overweight parent. The goal of this study will be to pilot test an intervention model with parents designed to support weight management efforts in children ages 6-11 years. We shall compare usual practice in current community and clinical programs in which children are the primary focus of intervention to a new innovative model in which the overweight parents of these children are also enrolled and monitored in a weight management program. It is hypothesized that children of parents who are in weight management will show better results in overweight reduction and prevention than children whose overweight parents are not managing their own weight. It is believed that parents who are managing their own overweight will serve as role models for their overweight children, and thus will better support their children in the areas of diet and physical activity.
Pediatric GERD Quality of Life
Gastroesophageal reflux occurs frequently in children. Despite the fact that most children outgrow their reflux and improvements have been made in the medical management of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), anti-reflux procedures (ARP), such as fundoplication, are some of the most common operations performed in children. There is some debate about the necessity and possible overuse of surgical therapy for GERD in children. Outcomes studies in the pediatric population to date have been mainly retrospective, single institution case series, have only examined recurrence of symptoms or the need for revision of the fundoplication, and have resulted in less than impressive results. In adult populations, fundoplication has been shown to improve quality of life (QOL) in patients with GERD using established disease specific instruments. There is, however, no such instrument for use in pediatric GERD patients. This project will develop a pediatric GERD QOL instrument using existing adult and pediatric QOL instruments, semi-structured interviews with pediatric GERD patients and their parents, as well as input from other credible informants such as pediatricians and pediatric gastroenterologists. The completed instrument will then be validated by testing groups of patients and parents with and without GERD, before and after fundoplication, and before and after initiation of medical therapy. The validated instrument will then be used in a natural history study of pediatric reflux and a future prospective study examining QOL in children with GERD before and after fundoplication.