Transforming Access to Asthma Care in Underserved Communities: A Scoping Review

Asthma is a complex chronic illness with significant morbidity and costs, but effective management can prevent these outcomes. The COVID-19 pandemic led to a shift from in-person to virtual healthcare, presenting an opportunity to explore telemedicine in asthma management.

We performed a scoping review guided by the Arksey and O'Malley framework. We used search terms including: asthma, telehealth, telemedicine, and virtual care, searching four databases (OVID Medline, CINAHL, Web of Science, Embase) from May to July 2023 for publications from 2010 onward, managed in Covidence. Inclusion criteria focused on articles addressing telemedicine accessibility for underserved or vulnerable groups. The selected articles were stratified into mutually exclusive categories: rural communities; lower income populations; lower income rural communities; black, indigenous, people of colour (BIPOC); and English as an additional language (EAL).

Out of 811 articles identified in our searches, 171 remained following de-duplication and title/abstract screening. After full-text review, 11 articles remained, stratified into main categories: rural communities (n = 3), lower income (n = 1), lower income rural (n = 2), BIPOC (n = 4), and EAL (n = 1). Most articles (n = 9, 69%) reported a positive association with telehealth use, although barriers like the digital divide (n = 3, 21%) were also noted.

While telemedicine has a positive effect on asthma care, barriers like inaccessibility remain, thereby limiting full benefits.