Association among friendship skills, involvement in after-school activities, and flourishing for adolescents with asthma and comorbid emotional and behavioral problems.

OBJECTIVES: Primary objectives were to examine the relations among abilities for making and keeping friends, involvement in after-school activities, and flourishing for adolescents with current asthma, as well as comorbid behavior problems, anxiety, or depression. METHODS: Data from the 2021 National Survey of Child Health was analyzed. Parents provided data on one child. Multinomial logistic regression analyses, both unadjusted and adjusted for the sampling weight, were conducted for adolescents with current asthma and comorbid behavior problems, anxiety, or depression. Predictors of flourishing included difficulty in making and keeping friends and involvement in after-school activities. Sex, age, race/ethnic group, and having been bullied were covariates. To examine differences for children with varied comorbid emotional and behavioral problems, relations were tested separately for children with asthma and behavior problems, children with asthma and anxiety, and children with asthma and depression. RESULTS: Skills for making and keeping friends were positively related to flourishing of adolescents with current asthma for all three types of mental health concerns. The relationship between involvements in after-school activities was less clear-cut, as this predictor was not always positively related to flourishing. CONCLUSIONS: Abilities to make and keep friends were related to flourishing, indicating that peer support is a resilience factor. Conversely, it was not clear that involvement in after-school activities was a resilience factor and more research about factors constituting successful after-school involvement for adolescents with asthma is needed. Future research, illuminating how social support from peers and involvement in activities promote flourishing will extend knowledge.

Scoping review: multiple stakeholders and child asthma management interventions.

OBJECTIVE: This study reviewed research to identify interventions aimed at improving asthma management among children by educating parents and other professionals. DATA SOURCES: PubMed, Medline, and Embase databases were utilized. STUDY SELECTIONS: Three databases were searched for child asthma management interventions published between 2012-2022 in English. Search terms included children, asthma, intervention(s), community pediatrics, coaches, schools, and stakeholders. Inclusion criteria were being an experimental study focused on children with asthma (birth-18 years), including stakeholder involvement, education, and a community focus. The search yielded 153 articles; nine were reviewed. RESULTS: In general, stakeholders developed programs that resulted in improvements in asthma symptoms, knowledge of asthma management, perceptions of health care, and decreased emergency health care visits. Successful interventions involved education about asthma management, providing medications, and partnerships with school staff, healthcare teams, and community members. Effective coordination and communication contributed to successful program implementation. Using technology for asthma management education was effective in tracking access to care and facilitated the delivery of medications. CONCLUSION: The findings indicate that interventions were effective in improving child asthma management. Stakeholder partnerships were critical to the effectiveness of interventions. Marketing the intervention and encouraging communication with parents also fostered success. Being able to assess the home environment and staying in contact with parents were barriers to these interventions. Conducting randomized controlled trials using the interventions found effective in these studies to assess change in symptoms and emergency care visits over time would yield important information about their long-term success and cost for implementation.

Predictors of family resilience, emotional, behavioral, and developmental concerns and emergency room visits for children with asthma.

INTRODUCTION: The current study fills a gap in the literature by examining relations among physical health and resilience factors, family functioning, emergency visits, and mental health problems for youth with asthma. The study purpose was to assess associations among four predictors-asthma severity, body mass index (BMI), having an adult mentor, and ability to make and keep friends-and 3 three outcomes-family resilience, emotional, behavioral and developmental concerns, and emergency room (ER) visits among youth with asthma. METHOD: The sample included 2,589 youth with asthma between 10 and 17 years old from the 2017-2018 National Survey of Children's Health. Multivariable logistic regressions examined associations between asthma severity, BMI, having an adult mentor, ability to make and keep friends and two outcomes: family resilience, and emotional behavioral and developmental concerns. A multinomial logistic regression examined the relationship between predictor variables and number of ER visits. RESULTS: Findings indicated having a mentor, being able to make/keep friends, and being underweight, average, or overweight compared to being obese were related to having family resilience. Making/keeping friends was a protective factor for emotional behavioral and developmental concerns. Having a mentor was related to higher levels of emotional behavioral and developmental concerns than not having a mentor. Youth who had mentors and friendship skills were less likely to have ER visits than youth with no mentors and difficulty with friendships. Youth with mild asthma severity and who were not obese had lower levels of ER visits than those with moderate/severe asthma or obesity. DISCUSSION: Child level protective factors were related to higher levels of family resilience and fewer ER visits for children with asthma. Further research to identify risk and protective factors is needed to develop interventions for youth with asthma. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).