Asthma management programmes benefit preschoolers: Study

Asthma management programmes, developed for parents of preschool children diagnosed with asthma, have huge benefits, shows a study.

The Asthma Basics for Children (ABC) programme, established by Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and a coalition of community service organisations, educators, parenting programmes, and community pediatric providers, had come up with a multi-layered approach that offers educational activities to parents and children in 31 Northern Manhattan daycare centres as well as training to community paediatric providers.

Following participation in the program, 85% of parents reported reducing their child's asthma triggers. The percent of children with asthma-related visits to emergency departments declined sharply from 74% to 47%, as did asthma-related hospitalizations, dropping from 24% to 11%.

The ABC Programme provided multiple opportunities for parents to learn about asthma signs and triggers in health units at the daycare centres. The Columbia researchers found that parent participation rates in the study exceeded rates found in most other preschool or school-based asthma programmes.

"Although emergency room visits and hospitalisation rates for this age group are more than twice that of older children with asthma, until we developed the ABC model, only a handful of programmes had been designed to promote better asthma management by their parents," said Sally P Findley, first author on the paper.

"Our study suggests that the benefits of such a programme are huge," Findley added.

Full study findings have been published in the February 2011 Journal of Urban Health.