School days can be difficult for kids with asthma. The Community Asthma Prevention Program (CAPP) is helping children in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) manage and understand their illness.

"We hope to decrease symptoms, lost school days, hospital stays, and visits to the emergency department by decreasing exposure to asthma triggers and allergens," says Victoria W. Persky, MD, professor of epidemiology and CAPP director. "Also, we want to improve the understanding of the psychosocial, environmental, and biologic issues affecting the disease."

Asthma mortality and morbidity in Chicago are among the highest in the United States. In 1994–95, when Persky conducted a survey of 3,660 children in Chicago public and Catholic schools, 16 percent said they had been diagnosed by physicians as asthmatics, and more than 18 percent stated that they had wheezed within the last year. Currently, according to Myrna Garcia, CPS director of student health, 11,500 asthmatic students have been identified.

CAPP began working with the schools in 1997 in collaboration with the Chicago Asthma Consortium, of which Persky was a founding member. "It’s all about community when you’re dealing with asthma," says consortium director Jura Scharf. "We want to reach people in culturally sensitive ways."

Toward this goal, parent educators were trained by Persky to work with asthmatic children and school staff at Adam Clayton Powell, James B. Farnsworth, and Wolfgang A. Mozart schools. SPH adjunct faculty member Lenore Coover, RN, MSN, developed the idea of using parent educators.

"Because parent educators work in the schools their children attend, they know the school culture and what approach will work best," Coover says. At Farnsworth, Maureen Damitz and Sue Wasielewski meet with children for one hour each week. "The most important thing we teach them is to be independent, to be in control, and not let asthma run their lives,’ says Damitz.

Wasielewski notes that the homey feeling of their get-togethers helps the kids learn more. "They know how to handle emergencies, and they know they can do things like any other kid as long as they take their medicines," she says.

Farnsworth school nurse Nancy Lagesse, RN, says group activities have helped asthmatic students feel less isolated and improved their understanding and management of the disease.

"We have one student who was so ill last year that staff at his former school frequently called 911," Lagesse says. "But this year, he’s learned how to take his medicine regularly, and we haven’t called even once."

New CAPP programs are_being initiated at Martin A. Ryerson School, George Washington High School, Finkl Academy, Suder Elementary School, and Ida F. Aldridge School. By fall 1999, five more schools and a mobile van will be added.

The Otho S.A. Sprague Memorial Institute helps fund CAPP. The institute is especially pleased that Persky has convinced CPS to allow students who use asthma inhalers to carry them during the school day. "We’re very excited about what can be achieved with focus and a great group of grantees," says James N. Alexander, spokesperson for the institute. "We’ve developed a lot of energy around the topic of asthma."

Contributed by Janice Rosenberg