Roaring Adventures of Puff

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• Overview
• The RAP Sessions for Children
• Research Results
• Copyright Notice

Overview

Roaring Adventures of Puff (RAP) is a childhood asthma education program that targets children 7 to 11 years of age and their families. RAP is designed to improve the quality of life of these children and improve asthma management for optimal asthma control. RAP is an innovative program that is adaptable to a variety of settings and serves as a health education model for children.

Through RAP's wide array of games and learning activities specifically designed to achieve the course objectives, children:

• problem solve best management practices
• gain peer support
• express concerns and fears
• practice important management and coping skills
• learn beneficial rationale
• achieve confidence to take charge of their asthma

The RAP Sessions for Children

RAP is most commonly delivered by health care professionals in a group setting. Although usually delivered over six sessions, alternative settings and timing are also suggested with a discussion about advantages and disadvantages of each option. Planning tools, presentation examples, evaluation measures, communication tools, best-practice resources are all included and updated and added to regularly.

RAP instructors use a detailed instructor’s manual, lesson checklists and other materials outlining the course content and the specific learning goals for each session. Each session is interactive, with teaching strategies including puppetry, games, role-play, model building, discussions, and asthma diary recording.

The six suggested session topics, each of which are 60-minutes in length, are:

• Session 1: Introducing Puff, the dino with asthma
  Getting to know each other, goal setting (when each child decides what play, activities, or sports they would like to be able to do – the responses make up their "wish list"), use of a peak flow meter, and diary monitoring.
• Session 2: What Makes Your Asthma Worse?
  Trigger identification, control, and avoidance. Basic pathophysiology using airway models to demonstrate how air moves in and out of healthy lungs and lungs affected by asthma.
• Session 3: Which Medications Are Which?
  Controller and reliever medications. The mechanics of the airways, proper use of the inhaler, and correct use of medications (another treasure to help attain the child’s wish). Avoidance of asthma triggers.
• Session 4: Do You Know Your Warning Signs?
  Asthma symptom recognition and action plan, knowing the warning signs become an important asthma treasure. Review the asthma severity zones and peak flow numbers. Actions to take in each zone.
• Session 5: How Does Asthma Affect Your Lifestyle?
  Participant descriptions of how asthma makes them feel. Help with controlling their asthma to overcome those feelings. Management of situations that present exacerbation risks such as visiting a friend whose father is a smoker, preparing for a roller-blade race, attending school with some asthma symptoms, and helping a friend who has had an asthma attack.
• Session 6: RAP it up – Review and Show Off for Parents and Teachers
  Children perform a skit, sing a song, or read a poem that shows what they have learned about asthma and how to control it. An asthma jeopardy game can be used as well. Children who brought their activity book to all sessions receive a prize. Certificates of Completion are awarded to each child.

• Optional Activities:
  Provides additional games and activities, including many for use with older children.
• Follow-up and Evaluation:
  Includes three course evaluation forms, one each for use by the instructor, parents, and children.
• Asthma Information:
  Contains recommendations for an asthma-friendly school policy and examples of such, summary of recommendations from the Canadian Asthma Consensus Report, 1999, What to Do if a Child has an Asthma Attack.

Research Results

The results of a case study prepared for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) highlight the many positive benefits of RAP, as indicated in the following table:

Copyright Notice

Copyright 2007 Alberta Asthma Centre. Any production of this document in whole or in part requires consent of the Copyright holder. For more information, contact the Alberta Asthma Centre at 780.407.3175.