Can Children Teach their Parents about Asthma?

The Open Airways for Schools (OAS) program has been shown to improve the self-management skills and health outcomes of students with asthma in Grades 3 to 5. This report examines the impact of OAS on students’ parents. Because pilot studies showed that parental attendance at school-based sessions was low, the authors held six sessions at school for children and gave children homework assignments to complete with parents at home to teach parents about asthma and build support for children’s self-management efforts. Analysis of 1-year follow-up data showed that children’s participation in OAS was a significant predictor of parental self-management skills (p < .03) and that OAS children’s communication was more strongly associated than controls’ with parents’ self-management (p = .05). The findings show that health education activities brought home from school by children can positively influence parents’ self-management of a complex chronic disease such as asthma.

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