Conditions: Childhood Asthma
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 442
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
The investigators hypothesize that school-based, direct supervision of daily controller therapy will result in more effective asthma control, as assessed by the Asthma Control Questionnaire than usual care. Additionally, as the result of enhanced asthma control and resulting decrease in health care utilization, school-based, direct supervision of daily controller therapy will result in lower cost per quality-adjusted life year (QALY) gained than usual care.

Detailed description:
This research is being done to test if children with asthma will have fewer asthma symptoms if they are monitored at school to make sure they take their inhaled steroid medication (ICS) every day and take the medication the right way. All of the children with asthma in the school will be asked to participate. In the first year in one-half of the schools, children and school staff will participate in a standardized asthma education program presented by the American Lung Association (ALA). Children will have daily monitoring of their inhaled asthma medication. The other half of schools will continue with the usual treatment of children with asthma. In the second year of the study, all schools and children will have the asthma education program and monitoring. Parents will be queried quarterly for information about their child's asthma.

Arms:
arm 1: Regular Asthma Therapy arm 2: Supervised asthma therapy in schools

Interventions: intervention 1: Supervised asthma therapy in schools
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: Therapy observed daily in school. Asthma education by American Lung Association

Protocol document: