Impact Of Asthma Self Management Education On Childhood Asthma Outcomes

Asthma is one of the most common respiratory disorders in children. Asthma self-management education programs aim to improve asthma treatment, management, and control in the United States and help patients to develop the knowledge and skills about asthma. Previous studies have shown that asthma self-management education programs have improved quality of care for children and reduced medical care costs. However, most of these studies had small sample sizes or focused on children from one certain hospital or a selected region for analysis. To fill this gap, this study analyzes data from the 2006-2012 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS) Asthma Call-back Survey (ACBS). ACBS is a nationally representative survey of children with asthma in the United States, which increases the generalizability of the findings. Multinomial logistic regression models are used to analyze the association between participation in asthma self-management education programs and health outcomes and healthcare utilization for children with asthma. The results indicate that receiving more asthma education is associated with fewer routine care visits, medical visits for asthma episodes, hospitalizations, emergency department visits, and urgent care visits, and better control of asthma symptoms. The benefits of asthma education on hospitalizations and emergency department visits did not differ by financial hardship or race/ethnicity. This study provides evidence that asthma self-management education improves health outcomes for children and reduces healthcare utilization.