Improvement of rural children's asthma self-management by lay health educators

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.