New Strategies, Education Needed for Parents Seeking Asthma Care for Children

Asthma self-management knowledge was significantly affected by sociodemographic differences such as child race/ethnicity, parent race/ethnicity as well as parent preferred language, parent education, and primary care provider (PCP)-parent racial concordance, according to a study published in the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved.

For this study, clinical research staff reviewed the electronic arrival board in the emergency departments (EDs) of two children’s hospitals in Seattle and Tacoma, Washington between September 2015 and February 2019 to identify Medicaid-insured children aged between 2 to 12 years with difficulty breathing or respiratory distress listed as visit reason.

When identified, eligible parents—those who were designated as primary asthmas care givers, spoke English or Spanish, and reported their child’s asthma or reactive airway disease at least 12 months prior—were approached in the ED to participate in the study. Any child with increased comorbidity that would call for more provider interaction was excluded.

Data was collected “via study-specific demographic and healthcare utilization questionnaires, the Asthma Self-Management Knowledge Questionnaire (ASMQ), and an assessment of child asthma morbidity developed by the Inner City Asthma Consortium (ICAC).”

“Black and Latinx parents, parents whose preferred language was Spanish, and parents with a high school education or less had significantly lower scores than their counterparts,” stated authors of the study. “In addition, we found that among less educated parents, Spanish preferred language was associated with lower knowledge scores, whereas among more highly educated parents, Latinx ethnicity was associated with lower knowledge scores.”

Authors of the study discussed how their findings “extend the literature by identifying a more nuanced association of race/ethnicity and level of education with asthma self-management knowledge.”

According to authors of the study, further research is needed to understand why asthma self-management knowledge is lower for these parents as well as how it can be improved.

“For example, video-based education has shown promise for increasing asthma knowledge among Latinx parents with limited English proficiency and among parents with low health literacy,” discussed authors of the study. “Similarly, the goal of the trial from which the current study was a secondary analysis is to utilize mobile technology to enhance parent-provider communication and asthma self-management to improve asthma outcomes among children in low-income communities.”

Authors of the study also concluded that unique strategies will need to be implemented in order to educate limited English proficiency (LEP), less educated, and Latinx parents about asthma management to reduce the disparities in asthma outcomes their children face.

Reference:
Mitchell S, Rangell A, Klein EJ, Stout J. Sociodemographic differences in asthma self-management knowledge of parents seeking asthma care for their children in pediatric emergency departments. J Health Care Poor Underserved. 2021;32(4):2191–2201. doi:10.1353/hpu.2021.0191.