Asthma agents: monitoring asthma in school.

摘要

Children enrolled in grades 1-4 at 2 elementary schools with a combined enrollment of 738 students participated in the program with the written consent of their parents or guardians. The schools are located in 2 urban, low-income, predominantly minority school districts each has 1 elementary, 1 middle, and 1 high school. Each district employed 1 full-time nurse for a 37.5-hour workweek. Although both nurses were based at the program schools, they were responsible for student health in all schools within their district, resulting in a nurse to student ratio of 1:1219 in 1 district and 1:1467 in the other district.The presence of nurses at their schools, computer access in individual classrooms and libraries, and prior participation in a school-based asthma case detection procedure were the criteria for inviting these districts to participate. Although both school districts had participated in a study to assess the validity of a school-based asthma case detection program that determined the prevalence ofasthma to be 12.5% within one district and 16.2% within the other, neither school district had ongoing asthma case detection or education programs.