Learning Objective #1: Compare the impact of an asthma educational intervention on children’s knowledge and self-efficacy for asthma management

Learning Objective #2: Discuss the effectiveness of an asthma educational intervention on children’s asthma management behaviors including metered dose inhaler technique

---

Purpose: To foster asthma management skills of school-aged children and their parents. Design: Experimental design with random assignment by schools to treatment or control groups. Children receive in-school instruction in 16 short lunch-time sessions, followed by a home visit for individualized education of parents and to reinforce children's knowledge and skills. Hypothesis: Children in the treatment group will demonstrate significant improvements from baseline in asthma knowledge, self-efficacy, and metered dose inhaler (MDI) technique, while controlling for individual and family background, after receiving the asthma education intervention. Findings: This is an on-going 4-year study with sequential annual enrollment of rural school districts. Two rural school districts (child n = 25) have completed the study. We are in year-2 and have enrolled 69 children who are currently receiving the intervention (cumulative n = 94 children). There are 58 boys (62%), 36 girls (38%), with 24% African American, 27% White, and 49% Hispanic children in the sample. Power analysis indicates that we will be able to detect a mean difference of .5 SD units at 80% power with no more than 59 participants to answer this hypothesis with the data that will be gathered in Spring 2005. Very preliminary findings from the first year data indicate that after the intervention, the treatment group had greater improvements in asthma knowledge (F = 8.83, p = .008), demonstrated better MDI skill (F = 20.74, p < .001), performed significantly more asthma management behaviors than the control group (F = 7.292, p = .014), but no significant change in asthma self-efficacy. Discussion: These preliminary first-year data findings must be viewed with caution because they are post-test ANOVA results and do not control for the background variables. The ANCOVA procedures will be run in Spring using the post-intervention data for the current total sample.