Recent developments in asthma education.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

Asthma education is a key component of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) asthma guidelines. Although the benefits and importance of asthma patient education are well documented, there are still many open questions regarding how to best provide asthma education. The following review highlights recent developments in this topic.

RECENT FINDINGS

Recent innovations have applied asthma education in a variety of settings. Ensuring that health professionals within a community provide consistent educational messages about asthma can create synergy and leverage limited healthcare resources to improve outcomes. In addition, children seem to have greater responsibility for self-management of asthma at younger ages.

SUMMARY

Further work is needed to understand how clinicians can best educate and give parents anticipatory guidance about how to best teach and transfer asthma self-management skills to young children. By developing teaching and mastering self-management skills at an early age, children may be able to carry such skills into adulthood. Finally, given the prevalence of healthcare disparities, there is a continued need for rigorously evaluated programs that are culturally appropriate and effective.