Reduce Children’s Asthma Attacks: A Community Masterclass

Captain Fearless is a 9-year-old girl who battles Wheeze Monsters with just her inhalers, spacer, bicycle bell and her magic goggles. The Big Bad Wolf has developed asthma and needs children’s help to know which inhaler to take  and when, to blow the piggies’ house down.

Heather Henry, a multiple award-winning nurse, presents BreathChamps: a unique, evidence-based and creative programme, for children aged 4 to 12 years to learn about asthma in fun ways.

Maybe the children you know aren’t taking their medications correctly, maybe they don’t turn up for reviews, maybe they're missing a lot of school as a result. Maybe they and their families just don’t understand their asthma or take it seriously. This course is for clinicians in primary and community settings and enthusiastic local people, who are weary of seeing children with asthma suffer unnecessarily. Asthma becomes a shared problem for clinicians and local people and so becomes about working better together … and making it fun!

There are 3 underlying principles, called the 3 Ds:

1. Democratise: The motto is “It takes a village to raise a child with asthma.” So BreathChamps is about cascading asthma knowledge through the whole community. Everyone has strengths and skills to contribute and everyone looks out for children and knows how to keep them well.

2. De-medicalise: Parents, carers, schools and community groups learn by sharing stories, games and crafts that explain the fundamentals of asthma in ways that are easy to understand, remember and repeat

3. Destigmatise: Children with asthma become heroes that battle Wheeze Monsters, rather than ‘patients’ who are passive recipients of care, or worse, feel like victims. All children learn about asthma, not just those with the condition, so they can help each other.

This is a game-changing programme, giving a host of practical tools that directly address the recommendations of the largest review of asthma deaths in the world: the National Review of Asthma Deaths, 2014. The programme introduces and applies a range of evidence-based interventions including asset based community development, group consultations or “asthma parties”, behavioural science, play therapy and improvement science.

From simply handing out stories during routine consultations to hosting parties and community events, this course offers clinicians the help they are seeking and offers local people the chance to shine and improve their own wellbeing in the process.

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