"A" Is for Asthma – and for Active!

Sesame Workshop provides clear and easy steps for controlling a child's asthma.

In the United States alone, more than one million preschool-age children have asthma, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists the respiratory illness as the third-ranking cause of hospitalization among children under the age of 15. These numbers show the need for clear, accurate information that helps parents, caregivers, and young children control asthma episodes.

Recognizing this need, Sesame Workshop developed the project "Sesame Street A Is for Asthma" to help children with asthma lead fun and active lives. The project was developed with the initial support of the American Lung Association and the Prudential Foundation.

The Workshop's first step was to conduct research on people's asthma knowledge, as well as their attitudes toward the illness. During this process, researchers identified several key messages that they wanted children and adults to understand. One dealt with the misconception of what asthma is, which impacted the way adults decided to prevent children's asthma episodes. The misconception also impacted children whose peers misunderstood the nature of their illness.

"We started hearing a lot of feedback from kids in group settings who had asthma," says Dr. Jeanette Betancourt, Sesame Workshop's vice president of outreach and educational practices. "Kids wouldn't play with them because they thought [their asthma] was contagious, like a really bad cold."

These stories helped the Workshop shape the content of A Is for Asthma, which focuses on knowledge informing more positive attitudes. "It's not just dealing with ‘what is an asthma episode,' but also dealing with the fact that kids with asthma, if they take their medicine, can run and play and have friends -- and want to make friends -- just like every other kid," Betancourt explains.

Resources included in A Is for Asthma

A Is for Asthma's resources are geared toward both children and adults, showing children with asthma what to do when they have trouble breathing, and explaining to the adults in their lives what they can do to help. The materials encourage parents and caregivers to work with their child and their doctor in ensuring that their child maintains an active lifestyle.

The project conveys these important messages through an original Sesame Street video story that introduces children to Dani, a Sesame Street Muppet who explains how he controls his asthma. Through songs and adventures, Dani helps children have fun while they learn about this serious topic.

The project encourages families to work with the child's doctor to complete an asthma profile worksheet, which contains specific questions about the child's medications, triggering factors, and emergency contacts. The completed profile can be shared with all the important adults in a child's life. In addition, the resources include an "asthma action plan" in the form of a colorful poster outlining immediate simple steps that everyone should take if they are with a child having an asthma episode. A Is for Asthma includes additional new resources in English and Spanish for 2008, with updated children's activities.

It wasn't easy to broach the topic of asthma with Sesame Street Muppets. The Muppeteers debated long and hard about which character could be the one with asthma. The idea of having a familiar Sesame Street Muppet experience an asthma episode was complicated by the fact that the regular Sesame Street show would not be continuing this storyline. This approach would have falsely portrayed the life of a child with asthma. In the end, the Muppeteers and researchers decided to introduce a new character so they would have more room to explore the subject. Enter Dani, a brand-new Muppet who looks and sounds like the average preschooler, speaks Spanish, is active and confident – and has asthma.

After the release of A Is for Asthma, the Workshop conducted impact research which proved the project is succeeding. After viewing the video and working with the resources, kids understood asthma better, realized that it is not a contagious illness, and saw that kids with asthma can do many of the same activities as children without asthma. Perhaps most importantly, children without asthma recognized that they could be friends with a child who has asthma in the same way they can be friends with anybody else. And that's what life on Sesame Street is all about.



Funding Partners

Everydaykidz.com / Astra Zeneca