Improvement of Rural Children's Asthma Self-Management by Lay Health Educators

Authors: Horner, Sharon D.; Fouladi, Rachel T.

Source: The Journal of School Health, Volume 78, Number 9, September 2008 , pp. 506-513(8)

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Abstract:

Background:

The purpose of the present analysis is to examine changes in rural children's asthma self-management after they received lay health educator (LHE)-delivered classes. Methods:

Elementary schools were randomly assigned to the treatment or attention-control condition and their participating students received either asthma education or general health promotion education, respectively. The triethnic sample was composed of 183 children (46% Hispanic, 29.5% non-Hispanic white, 22% African American, and 2.6% other categories) who had a mean age of 8.78 years (SD = 1.24). The time frame from baseline to postintervention was 12 weeks. Results:

Repeated measures analysis of variance found main effects in changes in scores for children's asthma knowledge, asthma self-management, self-efficacy for managing asthma symptoms, and metered dose inhaler (MDI) technique and significant group interaction effects for the treatment intervention on the measures of children's asthma knowledge, asthma self-management, and MDI technique. Conclusions:

The delivery of an asthma health education intervention by trained LHEs to school-aged children was an effective means for improving children's knowledge and skills in asthma self-management.

Keywords: asthma; children; self-management; rural

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1746-1561.2008.00336.x

Affiliations: 1: Associate Professor, ( ), Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A 1S6., Email: rfouladi@sfu.ca

Publication date: 2008-09-01