Abstract
Today, about 5 million children in the United States - one in every 15 children under the age of 18 - have asthma. The social and economic costs of childhood asthma are high. Asthma management requires a multifaceted approach, including partnerships among physicians, school nurses, and parents to create a continuum of care that is often missing from conventional health-care delivery systems. At a local level, coalitions are an important strategy for promoting partnerships for the management of asthma. Focus groups were conducted in the Hampton Roads region of southeastern Virginia to provide in-depth information about barriers to the management of asthma. The perspectives of physicians, school nurses, and parents who live in areas characterized as having unusually high rates of emergency department visits or hospitalizations for asthma were included. This paper presents an in-depth analysis of the qualitative data obtained from these focus groups.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.