Asthma education: what has been its impact?

Despite significant advances in the understanding and therapy of asthma, it is still a disease associated with an important human and socieconomical burden. There is still a gap between what is considered 'optional asthma management' and current care. All recent treatment guidelines indicate that asthma education is one of the main components of asthma management, with patients needing to get actively involved in their own care. Many educational programs have been developed in the past two decades, showing marked differences in approaches, populations involved and capacity to influence asthma outcomes. Published evaluations indicate that these programs generally increase knowledge and self management skills, but only a minority of programs showed a significant reduction in asthma-related morbidity. The most effective programs seem to be those integrated to asthma care, provided by specialized educators, based on behavioral theories and aimed at improving self-management skills. particularly when offered to asthmatic patients with high morbidity. Asthma education programs for both patients and health professionals need to be improved and made widely available. Hopefully, such initiatives will be supported and implemented to provide cost effective educational interventions that will improve quality of life of asthma sufferers and reduce health care costs.