Posted on March 5, 2001 at 9:45 a.m.

BIRMINGHAM, AL — UAB’s (University of Alabama at Birmingham) School Based Asthma program is kicking off a new elementary school asthma trial to determine how well the program’s in-school diagnostic tests work.

The program created screening and testing tools to discover undiagnosed asthma in school children during a research project in the Birmingham City Schools over the past four years.

“The goal is to discover if the tools we developed — questionnaires and respiratory function tests — are accurate,” says Sue Erwin, project coordinator for the study. “We are repeating the tests with a new group of students in new schools. Students deemed at risk by the tests, along with control groups, will be examined by physicians to determine precisely how well the tests identify asthma.”

In addition, Erwin says a goal of the project is to determine if bringing the physicians to the schools will be more effective than scheduling the children to visit the doctors in their offices. The program will bring a medical team to Midfield Elementary School on March 8, from 3-8 p.m., to examine the 4th grade class.

“We’re going to bring a full-service asthma clinic to the school, with physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists and nurse practitioners,” says Erwin. “We want to see if it’s easier for children to be seen by the medical team in the school setting, rather than in a hospital or doctor’s office.

Researchers will conduct these trials over the next two years in Bessemer, Midfield, Fairfield and Tarrant elementary schools. The trial is funded by the National Institutes of Health.

It is estimated that 6 to 10 percent of children in the United States have asthma, but as many as half of those have not been properly diagnosed. Early intervention and treatment can lead to successful management of asthma. UAB’s in-school testing during the first three years of the Birmingham school study found 219 cases of undiagnosed asthma in the targeted schools.