Estimating the Impact of Improving Asthma Treatment
A Review and Synthesis of the Literature
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Over 30 million Americans are suffering from asthma. It is the most common chronic disease among children, particularly minority children. While asthma has become an inherently treatable disease, actual treatment continues to fall short of recommended care. Many asthma attacks could be avoided, and much suffering prevented, if nationally accepted treatment guidelines were consistently followed. This report informs the debate about better ways to care for asthma by synthesizing the research on the cost and benefits of better asthma care. While the researchers could not obtain reasonable estimates of the costs or benefits of care, they found that there were substantial gaps in the quality of asthma care and that disadvantaged populations appear to receive worse care. More economic evaluation of the impact of these gaps and of interventions to improve asthma control is needed; such research should use standard definitions to allow comparison across studies and aggregation of data.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Background
Chapter Two
Assessment Of The Evidence Base
Chapter Three
Analysis of Selected Endpoints
Appendix A
Asthma Quality of Care — Search Methodologies
Appendix B
Literature Search Websites
Appendix C
Articles Included in the review
Appendix D
Abstraction Tool
The research described in this report was prepared for the Merck Childhood Asthma Network (MCAN) and conducted by RAND Health.
This report is part of the RAND Corporation working paper series. RAND working papers are intended to share researchers' latest findings and to solicit informal peer review. They have been approved for circulation by RAND but may not have been formally edited or peer reviewed.
The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.