Health Education Research, Vol. 18, No. 1, 121,
February 2003
© 2003 Oxford University Press
LETTER TO THE EDITOR |
Response to Michel Erlewyn-Lajeunesse and Paul Edmondson-Jones
Schools Asthma Management Project, University of Southampton, Health Education Unit, Research and Graduate School of Education, Highfield, Southampton SO9 5NH, UK. E-mail: dcm1{at}soton.ac.uk
We fully agree with the correspondents’ comments that socioeconomic factors do play a role in responses to surveys and that areas of social deprivation will not be adequately represented by this type of asthma questionnaire. School-based interventions resulting in improved asthma management and record keeping could result in more accurate reports of prevalence. Parents in our study did comment on the good care and management of their children’s asthma in the infant school years, and our data appeared to confirm this. One report was of infants being lined up in a ‘mother hen’ fashion by teacher at lunchtime so that they could be escorted to the school office for their therapy. Reports of asthma prevalence, however, tended to dip with the transition to the junior class (Year 3) when the teacher plays a less active role in the child’s access to therapy, resulting, perhaps, in a reduced awareness of the number of children with asthma. The results of our research still to be published indicate that a school-based asthma intervention can be effective and that school peers without the condition can play an important role in such an intervention.
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