Educational programs for children with asthma.

During the last decade, research on the behavioral aspects of childhood asthma has focussed on three goals: (1) learning how families manage asthma at home and use health care services; (2) identifying specific problems they encounter in managing asthma, and (3) developing and evaluating educational programs to teach families to overcome these problems and to manage asthma effectively in the home environment. This paper will describe the research findings on the problems families face in managing asthma, review the available and evaluated health education programs that have been developed to solve them and suggest strategies for physicians and other health care providers to incorporate health education into routine office care for asthma.