468 - The Effectiveness of a Video Based Asthma Education Program in an Outpatient Pediatric Population with Diverse Literacy Skills

Publication Number: 468.6602

Mithya Morton, CHOC Children's Hospital of Orange County, Orange, CA, United States; Olga Guijon, CHOC Children's Hospital of Orange County, Orange, CA, United States; Behnoosh Afghani, University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine, Orange, CA, United States

Background: Tailored educational interventions for asthma have been shown to be more effective compared to standardized ones in prevention and management of symptoms for patients and their caretakers, but there is little research on whether literacy levels make an impact on improving asthma education.

Objective: Our study aims to address this gap by exploring the change in asthma knowledge with an educational video made for a community with relatively lower literacy.

Design/Methods: A short video was created through KidzMedEd, a pipeline mentorship program that involves minority youth collaborating with healthcare professionals to create easily understandable yet factually correct medical information at a 3rd grade reading level. The video was provided in outpatient visits when asthma education happens (waiting for a provider, before asthma action plan) with parents of school aged children (4-10) with known diagnosis of asthma. A revised New Caste Knowledge Questionnaire (NAKQ), a validated research asthma assessment tool, was used to evaluate the parents’ knowledge about their child’s asthma. The parents completed the NAKQ questionnaire before the visit and after the video education at the end of the visit. Paired T-test was used to compare the mean scores before and after the video education.

Results: Of 31 parent participants, 87.1% spoke English well or very well, 74.2% were Hispanic or Latino, 48% did not complete high school and only 9.7% had college or higher degrees. Of 31 parents, 51.6% reported that their child had mild asthma, 38.7% had moderate asthma and 9.7% marked unsure. The highest score for the questionnaire was 15. The total mean NAKQ scores increased significantly pre to post-video intervention (9.6 to 13.3, p< 0.0001). The difference was more pronounced for questions regarding asthma symptoms and pathophysiology.

Conclusion(s): Our results show that the KidzMedEd video resulted in an improvement in asthma knowledge in a patient population which was predominantly composed of parents with lower educational backgrounds. The notable improvement of NAKQ scores with the video intervention showcases a new health care model where minority youth use technology to advocate for community needs by creating easy-to-understand medical education resources. Additionally, given the significant increase in knowledge, more technology-based educational models tailored to different health literacy levels, should be developed and assessed for asthma management. Further research is also needed to see if this leads to improved health outcomes or retainment of information over time.