Teaching Children With Asthma and Who Live in a Rural Setting How to Self-Manage Their Asthma

A+ Asthma Rural Partnership

To determine if teaching rural children with asthma and their parents about appropriate medication use, asthma triggers unique to a rural setting and increasing access to medical care will result in a decrease in emergency department visits.

Many self-management asthma interventions have demonstrated increase in asthma knowledge, reduced emergency department visits, increased self-efficacy and quality of life. The type of self-management interventions, specifically individualized and interactive educational interventions, have been suggested to have the strongest effect on asthma morbidity. Few studies have tested asthma self-management educational interventions in increasing knowledge, self-efficacy and quality of life in rural pediatric populations. The goal of this study was to test the effectiveness of an asthma educational intervention in improving asthma knowledge in rural children and their parent/caregivers. We hypothesized that an interactive asthma educational intervention would increase parent/caregiver and child asthma knowledge resulting in decreased emergency room visits in rural families of children with asthma.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Physician diagnosed asthma, attend elementary school in rural county agreeing to participate

Exclusion Criteria: Participation in another asthma study or having other respiratory illness such as cystic fibrosis, BPD

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