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As a parent, your first concern, is your own child. But you may want to reach beyond your child's individual situation to help families and others in your community bring the growing incidence of childhood asthma under control. It's the old tried-and-true "strength in numbers" strategy: by working together, groups of people can attack a problem more successfully than a single individual. Toward that goal, this topic describes a model program that has been working successfully in our own neighborhood under the sponsorship of The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. You may want to consider using this model to develop a similar approach in your own community. The Philadelphia Community Asthma Prevention Program Many studies have shown that two factors are essential to improve the quality of life of people with asthma: increasing their knowledge of the disease and improving their environment. The Philadelphia Community Asthma Prevention Program (CAPP) was established in 1997 to address these issues in the West Philadelphia community. Remarkably successful in only a few years, it is being replicated in North Philadelphia as well. As a community based program, CAPP provides a comprehensive, community based program to promote an optimal learning environment for asthma education. CAPP's specific goals include educating children and families to control exposure to asthma triggers, form asthma management plans, monitor lung function, and improve self-management behavior. It also trains members of the community to become asthma educators and partners with families to improve the quality of life for children with asthma. To these ends, CAPP developed three main components: community education classes, a train the trainer program, and a home visitor program. Community Education Classes Classes for both children and adults are taught in small groups with discussions led by peer educators. CAPP's community asthma education classes are held in community centers, schools, churches, and day care centers. In CAPP's first four years, they reached over 1,600 parents and children with asthma. Parents and children are taught simultaneously in separate classes. Classes are open to the entire community and are advertised in local newspapers, Laundromats, libraries, and doctors offices. Conducted in one-hour sessions, classes run once a week for five weeks. Each class addresses a different aspect of asthma. Children's classes are geared toward five-year-olds and older and are taught by trained teenage peer educators. Trained parent peers teach parents classes. The curriculum used for the program is the "You Can Control Asthma" curriculum developed by Georgetown University and written for low-literacy audiences (fifth-grade reading level). This curriculum is widely available and can be ordered from The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. In the first class, participants discuss how asthma affects the body. During week two, they discover what asthma triggers are and learn techniques to avoid them. The most popular class occurs in the third week when participants are instructed to bring in their medicines and discuss their proper use; asthma devices, such as inhalers and spacers, are also demonstrated. The fourth week's class focuses on the peak flow meter and asthma management plan based on the medicines prescribed by their physicians. Week five's class concludes with a discussion of family and school issues. More than 75 percent of participants who enroll in the classes complete the five week class series. Below is a summary of the five sessions.
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