Tailoring asthma education programs to minorities can improve patients' quality of life, according to Australian researchers who reviewed three studies that included 396 asthma patients, ages 7 to 59, from ethnic minority groups.
All the studies compared the use of culture-specific asthma education programs to general education programs or usual care, United Press International reported.
Culture-specific programs were more effective in improving asthma quality of life scores in adults than general programs or usual care, the review authors concluded. But there wasn't enough data to determine whether the culture-specific programs had any effect on asthma-related hospitalizations.
The review was published in The Cochrane Library journal.