Health Promotion Expo Plan: Focus On Asthma In Primary School Children And Their Guardians

Design

Children suffer from various kinds of diseases which affects their growth as well as study also. In this key health priority expo asthma among the primary school children is being addressed. Asthma is a common cause of several types of illness. Review of some medical literature also reveals that asthma attack among the children is increasing at an alarming rate and sometimes the reason is polluted environment and sometimes it happens due to genetic order (Cabana et al. 2014). It can have many adverse effects on the education of the children. The attack can come anytime and when the children are there in their schools, it can be problematic for them to deal with. Due to asthma attack, children need to spend sleepless night which can create several other health hazards as a consequence. This expo will assess how asthma affects the life of children and what are the health promotion activities that can be helpful in order to address the issue.  

The main and primary target audience for this expo is the primary school children among which most of them is infants and just started going school. Apart from that, their parents, guardians and school teachers and other staffs present in the school will also be considered as secondary target audience for this expo (Chang et al. 2015).

Asthma is a dangerous disease as it causes swelling of the airways and in this inflammatory disorder, the condition leads to wheezing, chest tightness, coughing, and breathlessness particularly at night or in the early morning. However, among the children under the age of five years, the clinical symptoms of asthma vary and they are nonspecific also. The health issue is significant among the children as in this age group a child grows physically as well as mentally. The disease affects their health and their educational growth also. In a survey it has been found that, almost 60 % of school-aged asthmatic children have allergies (CDC.gov 2018). During the 20^th century, the prevalence of childhood asthma increased among the Europeans. According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), asthma is more common in children than elders and it is a leading chronic disease (CDC.gov 2018). Asthma has been considered as one of the reasons of missing schools among children and study in the year 2013 revealed that about 13.8 million children miss their school days due to asthma. In the year 2015, they reported at least 1 in 12 children have asthma (United States Environmental Protection Agency 2016). Again, in the year 2016, CDC reported that 50% of children under the age group of 5 had an episode with asthma in their life (CDC.gov 2018).  

Asthma is a serious chronic disease and its growth among the school children has been increased in the past few decades. It affects the health of the children and they also lack behind from the children with no asthma in all aspects. Various health promotional activities are there in order to address the issue regarding asthma among the primary school children. The planned health promotion activity is, promoting some mild physical exercise as well as activities and breathing exercise techniques among the primary school children suffering from asthma (Zahran et al. 2016). Physical exercises are part of the school and children with asthma should be allowed to do some mild exercises along with breathing exercise techniques in school. In this health promotion activity a team of health experts will visit schools and there will be meeting session and conference with teachers, staffs and guardians of the children with asthma. They will be informed about the effectiveness of breathing exercise and mild physical activity to keep the child with asthma more active and fit which will help them not to miss the school days. Children should be learned the proper way of breathing exercise and their guardian should also play an important role to treat their children at home (Giallo et al. 2015).  

Answers

The health promotional activity for the primary school children with asthma will inform various key policies to be acquired by the guardians, teachers and other staffs. The activity will inform the teachers and other staffs of the school to allow inhalers and while doing the physical activities include warm up and cool down periods for the children with asthma (Gibbs 2015). Cool down periods are incorporated so that, after doing any activity the children can have some rest in order to get relief. The time and the length of the physical activities for the children with asthma must be reviewed according to the health status of the children. All the children must be allowed to involve in the group activity with other children but a major modification particularly in their physical activity is required. Staffs will be informed to take extra care for the children who have recovered from a recent asthma attack. Schools will be informed to keep emergency medication and inhaler for the children and the guardians will also be educated with the techniques of breathing exercises for the children. The activity will also produce a video showing the breathing exercise techniques to help the parents to learn them properly so that they can help their children in doing that.  

Health promotion is a process of enabling control over any particular disease. In this expo, various health promotion principles are being used. Health promotion involves a wide range of population and healthcare experts play a vital role in this purpose. This requires a strong cooperation among the people associated with it. The planned health promotional activity for asthma among the primary school children will be organized in the primary schools to inform the guardians as well as the teachers and other staffs about the requirement of the activities among the children with asthma. Here the health promotion plan will work in partnership with school staffs, teachers and guardians so the intersectoral health promotion principle is used and it will also strengthen the whole community action (Zahran et al. 2016). Apart from that, it will also develop the personal skill regarding the effectiveness of breathing exercise and other mild physical activities for asthma. The school teachers and other staffs will be involved in the program and it will help to create a supportive environment for the children with asthma in the school. It will also promote empowerment which is basically a way of enabling people to gain control over the particular disease among the primary school children (Lundbäck et al. 2016).

In order to implement the planned health promotion activity for primary school children with asthma some visual charts to show mild physical exercises and activities and videos showing the breathing exercise techniques are required. Consent letter from school to organize the session is also required.

In order to get the success in the health promotional activity designed for the primary school children suffering from asthma, collaboration among group members is highly necessary. Effective collaboration of the group memebers will help to achieve the goal easily.

References

Cabana, M.D., Slish, K.K., Evans, D., Mellins, R.B., Brown, R.W., Lin, X., Kaciroti, N. and Clark, N.M., 2014. Impact of physician asthma care education on patient outcomes. Health Education & Behavior, 41(5), pp.509-517. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2005-1055. [Accessed 16 Sep. 2018].

CDC.gov. (2018). Asthma | Healthy Schools | CDC. [online] Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/asthma [Accessed 16 Sep. 2018].

CDC.gov. (2018). CDC – Asthma – Data and Surveillance – Asthma Surveillance Data. [online] Available at:https://www.cdc.gov/asthma/asthmadata.htm [Accessed 15 Sep. 2018].

Chang, A.B., Bell, S.C., Torzillo, P.J., King, P.T., Maguire, G.P., Byrnes, C.A., Holland, A.E., O’Mara, P. and Grimwood, K., 2015. Chronic suppurative lung disease and bronchiectasis in children and adults in Australia and New Zealand. Medical Journal of Australia, 202(1), pp.21-23. Available at: https://www.mja.com.au/system/files/issues/cha00287.pdf [Accessed 15 Sep. 2018].

Giallo, R., Bahreinian, S., Brown, S., Cooklin, A., Kingston, D. and Kozyrskyj, A., 2015. Maternal depressive symptoms across early childhood and asthma in school children: findings from a Longitudinal Australian Population Based Study. PLoS One, 10(3), p.e0121459. Available at: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0121459 [Accessed 15 Sep. 2018]. 

Gibbs, J.E., 2015. Eucalyptus pollen allergy and asthma in children: a cross-sectional study in South-East Queensland, Australia. PloS one, 10(5), p.e0126506. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0126506. [Accessed 16 Sep. 2018].

Lundbäck, B., Backman, H., Lötvall, J. and Rönmark, E., 2016. Is asthma prevalence still increasing?. Expert review of respiratory medicine, 10(1), pp.39-51. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1586/17476348.2016.1114417. [Accessed 15 Sep. 2018] 

United States Environmental Protection Agency. Asthma Facts. May 2016 https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-05/documents/asthma_fact_sheet_english_05_2016.pdf [Accessed 16 Sep. 2018].

Zahran, H., Bailey, C., Damon, S., Garbe, P. and Breysse, P. (2018). Vital Signs: Asthma in Children — United States, 2001–2016. DOI:https://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6705e1. [Accessed 16 Sep. 2018].