BREATHE-CC study context
Instruments in production
11
REDCap forms
Fields
289
142 carry branching logic
Events per participant
19
Baseline + 18 monthly follow-ups
HIPAA identifiers
17
Across contact, address, and change forms
What BREATHE-CC is. A prospective pediatric respiratory health cohort run by the Melaram Lab at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi, based at Driscoll Children’s Hospital. It follows children with asthma through monthly surveys, EHR abstraction, and geospatial environmental monitoring in a predominantly Hispanic coastal community. Aidan Meyers is Project Coordinator and second author on the protocol.
Childhood asthma disproportionately affects Hispanic children in the United States, yet few longitudinal cohorts exist in Gulf Coast communities where environmental exposures may compound sociodemographic vulnerabilities. Corpus Christi, a majority-Hispanic city with high levels of petrochemical industrial operations, reports higher asthma prevalence than state and national averages.
Architecture below reflects the v16.1.4 production export of Tue, Aug 25, 2026.
Published study protocol
Bridging Respiratory Exposures, Asthma, and Environmental Health in Corpus Christi (BREATHE-CC): a prospective cohort study protocol
Donald E. Warden, Aidan Meyers, Hiea Almekhlabi, Manasa Kuchavaram, Erin Richmond, Mari Allison-Hoien, Lei Jin, Natalie Johnson, Jon Roberts, Rajesh Melaram.
BMC Public Health (2026) 26:2521·doi:10.1186/s12889-026-28265-5
Note for citation: the thesis proposal and the older context notes both say the protocol was “submitted to BMJ Open 04/03/2026”. It was published in BMC Public Health, and it is out rather than under review. Cite it from here.
Cohort design
The protocol's own description of how the study runs.
Population
Approximately 200 children under 10 years of age with asthma
Enrolled from Driscoll Children’s Hospital.
Follow-up
Monthly for up to 18 months
Parent-reported modified ISAAC questionnaire capturing household exposures, asthma exacerbations, and wheezing episodes.
Validation
Electronic health record review
Questionnaire responses are validated and supplemented against the EHR.
Exposure linkage
Daily PM2.5, PM10, O₃, SO₂
TCEQ and EPA monitoring station concentrations linked to participants’ geocoded addresses.
Analysis
GAMs, Poisson regression, GBTM
Associations between pollutant exposure, household risk factors, exacerbations, and wheezing phenotypes, adjusted for age, sex, BMI, and sociodemographic indicators. GBTM identifies latent wheezing phenotypes.
Companion documents
The written record behind the addition set — committee-ready, and the basis of the IRB modification narrative.
Longitudinal structure
1 arm, 19 events. Baseline (day 0, window 0 to +30), then Month 1 through Month 18, at 30-day offsets with a −2/+28 day window.
Eighteen monthly follow-ups per participant is what makes trajectory modelling possible — and what makes the exposure side need a time dimension to match.
Instruments
Every production form, what it holds, and what the IEI takes from it.
Identification & Contact
identification_contact_informationPrimary residential address — the anchor point for ambient exposure extraction.
Demographics / Intake
demographics_intakeHousehold income, parental education, insurance, housing tenure, food insecurity — the adjustment set for every outcome model.
Primary Household Details
primary_household_detailsHome characteristics feeding the indoor source term.
Primary Household Safety
primary_household_safety_perceptionsIndoor environmental safety items at the primary residence.
Secondary Household Details
secondary_household_detailsMulti-household children — the second home the IEI must weight separately.
Secondary Household Safety
secondary_household_safety_perceptionsIndoor environmental safety at the second home.
Monthly Follow-up
monthly_followupThe outcome engine: exacerbation counts, C-ACT scores, medication use, healthcare utilisation, repeated across 18 monthly events.
Prenatal / Infant History
prenatal_infant_historyEarly-life exposures used as covariates and in phenotype interpretation.
Geocode Derived Variables
geocode_derived_variablesAlready-derived geospatial variables — the hand-off point between REDCap and the kriging pipeline.
Change of Address
change_of_addressResidential mobility. A move mid-study means the ambient exposure surface must be re-extracted for the new location.
Change of Contact
change_of_contactRetention tracking only.
Spanish translation
Spanish translation of the production instruments is current as of the Aug 25 export.
The Fields tab is finished and the Surveys tab needs two items re-translated: a new compensation sentence on the primary_household_details thank-you screen, and a piped participant identifier in the prenatal_infant_history instructions. The English moved in 284 places overall, but everything except those two was markup, so the approved Spanish still holds.
The addition set has no Spanish version yet, and must be submitted to IRB alongside the English version rather than after it. At ten items that is roughly a day of translator time, against several days for the 61-item draft it replaces.