Culture-specific programs for children and adults from minority groups who have asthma

In this review, we examined if culture-specific asthma education programmes improves asthma related outcomes in children and adults from minority groups with asthma. Four studies with 617 patients, aged from 5 to 59 years were included in the review. We found that culture specific programmes were better in improving quality of life in adults and asthma knowledge in children but did not significantly improve asthma exacerbations. However there is insufficient data to be confident about the impact on exacerbations or whether culture specific programmes are beneficial in all settings. Nevertheless, it could be argued that asthma education programmes should be as culturally specific as possible, given the increased severity of asthma in minority groups and the complexity of health outcomes and culture. More studies are clearly required to address this question and to further inform relevant clinical practice and health policy.