Background: Many children with asthma live with frequent symptoms and activity limitations, and visits for urgent care are common. Pediatricians do not typically meet with families regularly in order to monitor asthma, identify possible problems with the management of the child’s asthma, or provide self-management strategies for those diagnosed with asthma and the respective families. Educational tools designed to teach asthma monitoring and management to asthma patients and caretakers are not readily available. Interventions designed to improve asthma care have proven difficult to distribute to large scale office practice.

Technology Description: To address the lack of educational tools available for asthma management and monitoring, physicians at the Washington University School of Medicine have created the Partners Program, which consists of pragmatic telephone-based peer-training intervention for parents of children with asthma to improve asthma management skills. The coaching intervention sought to change behavior involving the effective use of controller medications, the effective use of rescue medications, and monitoring in order to ensure optimal control. The Partners Program was tested in a clinical trial of over 900 and was shown to be effective at improving children’s asthma control, was popular by parents and physicians, and likely could pay for itself by the reduction in healthcare costs.

Key Advantages:

• The PARTNER program was shown to be effective at improving children’s asthma control
• The educational tools were found to be popular with both parents and physicians
• The program could likely pay for itself by the reduction in healthcare costs