Volume 26, Issue 1: February, 1999

Abstract

MONITORING THE DISSEMINATION OF AN EDUCATIONAL PROTOCOL ON PEDIATRIC ASTHMA IN FAMILY PRACTICE: A TEST OF ASSOCIATIONS BETWEEN DISSEMINATION VARIABLES

Ilse Mesters, PhD; Ree M. Meertens, PhD

Many asthma education programs aim at reducing morbidity. Now that effective programs are available, the next step is the nationwide dissemination to achieve morbidity reduction. A dissemination of a tested program has been undertaken in Dutch primary care, guided by the Diffusion of Innovation theory. It was hypothesized that greater awareness and concern and/or receptivity about asthma self-management would make it more likely that family physicians would adopt the program. Family physicians were considered more likely to adopt the program if they saw it as an improvement on their current way of providing education, as easy to use, and as having observable outcomes. It was expected that once the program had been adopted, and as it was being implemented, it would increasingly be perceived by its users as successful. Finally, more perceived success of performance was expected to be related to continued use. Both longitudinal and cross-sectional data largely confirmed the hypotheses.