Purpose: The purpose was to evaluate the effectiveness of Staying Healthy-Asthma Responsible & Prepared, an academic asthma health education and counseling program, on fostering the use of effective asthma self-care behaviors.
Design and methods: This was a phase III, two-group, cluster randomized, single-blinded, longitudinal design-guided study. Caregivers of 205 fourth- and fifth-grade students completed the asthma health behaviors survey at preintervention, and 1, 12, and 24 months postintervention. Analysis involved multilevel modeling.
Results: All students demonstrated improvement in episode management, risk reduction/prevention, and health promotion behaviors; Staying Healthy-Asthma Responsible & Prepared students demonstrated increased improvement in episode management and risk reduction/prevention behaviors.
Practice implications: Working with schoolteachers, nurses can improve the use of effective asthma self-care behaviors.
Keywords: Adaptation; adjustment; condition management; episode management; health promotion; intervention; pediatric; prevention; quality of life; randomized control trial; risk reduction; self-management.
© 2014, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.