Evaluation of a Web-enabled Interactive Multimedia Pediatric Asthma Education Program

Download or read book Evaluation of a Web-enabled Interactive Multimedia Pediatric Asthma Education Program written by Santosh Krishna and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction . Asthma is a chronic disease that affects millions of children. Many asthma education programs have been developed and evaluated. However, no Internet-enabled, asthma education program had been evaluated in a randomized controlled trial. This study investigated the effects of an Internet-enabled interactive multimedia asthma education program on asthma knowledge of children and their caregivers, on children's health outcomes and their use of health care resources. Methods . Two hundred and twenty-eight asthmatic children visiting a pulmonary clinic were randomly assigned to control and intervention groups. Children and caregivers in both groups received conventional verbal and printed information about asthma. Intervention group participants received additional asthma education through the Interactive Multimedia Program for Asthma Control & Tracking (IMPACT©). Knowledge, symptom history, resource utilization, and quality of life data were collected at the initial visit and at 3- and 12-month intervals. Results . Analysis of knowledge scores using one-group Student's t-tests showed a significant improvement in disease specific knowledge about asthma and its management between the initial visit and the 12-month follow-up visit among the three groups: caregivers of children 0-6 years old, caregivers of children 7-17 years old and children 7-17 years old. Comparison of control and intervention groups using the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel statistic revealed significantly higher knowledge gains in the intervention groups among caregivers of children 0-6 years old (p = .0085) and 7-17 years old (p = .0073), and among children 7-17 years old (p = .0006). The intervention group children experienced fewer days of asthma symptoms (p = .0099), fewer emergency room visits (p = .0243), and a decreased daily dose of inhaled corticosteroids (p = .0069). Knowledge scores for children 7-17 years old correlated with fewer urgent physician visits (r = 0.37, p = .011) and less frequent use of quick-relief medicines (r = 0.30, p = .043). However, the two groups did not significantly differ in the frequency of quick relief medicine use, the days of activity limitation, the nights of disturbed sleep, the number of urgent visits to physicians, the number of hospitalizations due to asthma, the days of stay in hospital for all hospitalizations, the number of school days missed, the asthma related quality of life and in the Pulmonary Function Test measures. Conclusions . The Interactive Multimedia Program for Asthma Control & Tracking (IMPACT©) is effective in improving asthma knowledge of asthmatic children and their caregivers and in improving health of asthmatic children.