Paper
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
This presentation is part of : Health Promotion for the Child
Evaluating the Self-Management Behaviors and Health-Related Quality of Life of Children With Asthma in the SMART Program
Li-Chi Chiang, PhD, RN, School of Nursing, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan
Learning Objective #1: Understand the content and procedure of school management of asthma - resources and teaching (SMART)
Learning Objective #2: Realize the recording methods and outcomes evaluation of SMART

School-based asthma management was a crucial policy for children with asthma. This study was a randomized controlled trial to examine the effectiveness about self-management behaviors and Health-Related Quality Of Life (HRQOL) of children after implementation SMART (School Management of Asthma –Resources and Teaching) program for six months. Six elementary schools were randomly assigned and matched by the size and geographic locations. SMART program included asthma education, staff communication, case management model, and medical resources network. In the pre-test, 224 students aged 6~10 with permission of parents and 219 parents were recruited. Among them, 180 parents and 189 students were followed up in the post-test. General linear models for repeat measures (SPSS 10.0) compared the group effects, time effects and interaction effects. Results illustrated that the improvements of asthma knowledge of students/parents in experimental group were significantly higher than the control group with time and interaction effects (p<0.001). The enhancements of HRQOL by students' assessment after SMART program was significantly better than the control group with group and interaction effects (p<0.001). The changes of self-management behaviors of students/parents and HRQOL by parents' assessment in experimental group were not significantly higher than the control group without interaction and group effects with significant time effects (p<0.001). This study validates the effectiveness of asthma knowledge of students/parents and HRQOL by students' assessment of SMART program. Continue follow-up study of the longitudinal effects is important.