Asthma Home Management in the Inner-City: What can the Children Teach us?
Melissa H Bellin, Angelica Newsome, Cassie Land and 4 others
PMID 27955875WHAT IT FOUND
Children moving between homes struggled to keep asthma medicines available.
Smoke exposure was common, and moving rooms or breath-holding did not protect them. They also described sadness and lost time with relatives who smoked.
Key findings
01Frequent moves and sleeping in different homes made it hard to keep asthma medicines and devices available and to maintain medication routines.
02Second-hand smoke exposure was common, and family strategies such as moving to another room, breath-holding, fabric barriers, or air fresheners were largely ineffective.
03Some children could not name their medications or describe consistent storage, and younger children identified inhalers by color only.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
Only 13 children participated, all African American and 92.3% enrolled in Medicaid, so the themes may not fit other groups. Participants were recruited from families who had completed a randomized trial and agreed to future contact, and letters went to 24 eligible families with 20 contacting the study office. Focus group children were older at baseline (7.8 vs 6.1 years) and more likely to have had a prior intensive care admission (61.5% vs 27.1%) than children from the larger sample. Focus groups included children aged 6 to 14, and younger children may have been less willing to speak. The analysis reports children's perspectives only; caregivers were not included in the child focus groups analyzed here. Because this is a qualitative study, it cannot show that an asthma home management program improves outcomes.
Declared interests
The authors report no conflicts of interest and say they alone are responsible for content and writing.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these themes as evidence that an asthma home intervention works. The paper describes 13 children's experiences and does not report outcomes from a tested intervention.