Tailored minority asthma education works

DARWIN, Australia, May 12 (UPI) -- Asthma education programs tailored for ethnic minority groups can help improve asthma sufferers' quality of life, Australian researchers suggest.

Lead author Emily Bailey of the Menzies School of Health Research evaluated three studies that included 396 people with asthma from ethnic minority groups. Participants were between the ages of 7 and 59. Each trial compared the use of culture-specific asthma education programs to generic education programs or usual care.

The review, published in The Cochrane Library, finds culture-specific programs were superior to generic programs or usual care in improving asthma quality of life scores in adults.

Bailey and colleagues say they were unable to conclude whether the culture-specific programs had any influence on asthma hospitalizations because of the small number of available studies as well as insufficient data from each study.

The researchers say that more research in the area of culture-specific asthma programs will help answer this question, but acknowledge that cost is a factor.