Educational Home Visits Can Improve Asthma in Children, Study Suggests

ScienceDaily (Nov. 30, 2009) — A few home visits by a health care specialist to educate children with asthma about basic strategies for earlier symptom recognition and improving medication use can lead to fewer flare-ups and less frequent trips to the ER, according to research from Johns Hopkins Children's Center published in the December issue of Pediatrics. An estimated 6.5 million children in the United States have asthma, which is the leading pediatric chronic illness in this country and disproportionately affects minorities.

"We compared several strategies to improve asthma control among children and, much to our delight, we found that taking a few simple steps can go a long way toward doing so," says senior investigator Kristin Riekert, Ph.D., a pediatric psychologist at Hopkins and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Adherence Research Center.

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