This paper provides an analysis of the asthma problem affecting the children of our nation. Over the course of the past three decades asthma morbidity and mortality rates have steadily been on the rise, despite new and potent medications and improvements in asthma management practices. Unfortunately, asthma is a very complicated disease. A number of factors serve as barriers to prevention, and help to explain why prevention efforts have not been effective in reducing asthma rates.
This thesis stresses the importance of prevention as the means of controlling and reducing the incidence and severity of the disease, identifies nation wide asthma efforts, and discusses some of the barriers to prevention. A reduction in asthma incidence, hospitalizations, and death rates is possible, but for this to happen there needs to be greater asthma outreach and education for both the affected and unaffected. Several recommendations on how to improve educational efforts and foster behavioral change in asthmatic children and their families are given.
Potential solutions to the asthma problem are discussed in terms of:
Recommendations for the use of innovative measures such as story telling, use of puppets, live demonstrations, videos, and computer games are identified as some of the many ways that physicians and health care providers could foster patient behavior change. In addition, suggestions for the provision of asthma equipment, plastic mattress covers, medication, transportation, and environmental exposure assessments by health maintenance organizations are made.
Recommendations for primary and secondary prevention include outreach efforts and research targeted at children who are at risk of developing asthma. Recommendations also are given for the integration of an asthma program and a child treatment plan into schools, and the development of asthma awareness advertising campaign.