Rationale
Asthma is one of the most common chronic illnesses in childhood and remains a major cause of emergency department attendance and hospital admission worldwide. Emergency presentations for asthma are often considered opportunities to identify children at high risk of future exacerbations and to provide interventions that may improve long-term asthma management.
The current Cochrane review, published in 2009, included 38 studies involving 7,843 children who had attended an emergency department for asthma within the previous 12 months. The review found that educational interventions for children and/or their carers reduced subsequent emergency department attendances, hospital admissions, and unscheduled doctor visits. However, uncertainty remained regarding the most effective type, duration, and intensity of educational intervention, and there was limited evidence for outcomes such as quality of life, symptoms, and lung function.
Since publication, asthma management has evolved considerably. Digital health technologies, personalized asthma action plans, school-based support, remote monitoring, and multifaceted self-management programmes have become more common. A substantial body of additional evidence is therefore likely to have accumulated, providing an opportunity to clarify which educational approaches are most effective for reducing future asthma-related emergencies.
Call
We are looking for author teams to take on a Cochrane review in this area.
A new protocol will be required. Given developments in asthma care and patient education since the review was last updated, author teams should carefully consider whether the original scope, intervention categories, and comparisons remain the most clinically relevant approach.
The successful team should provide a clear rationale for the proposed review scope and analytical framework. Consideration should be given to the wide range of educational interventions now available, including digitally delivered interventions, self-management education, multicomponent programmes, and interventions targeted at children, parents, carers, schools, or healthcare professionals.
Teams should outline how they will define and classify educational interventions, manage intervention complexity, and address clinical and methodological heterogeneity arising from differences in healthcare settings, asthma severity, age groups, and intervention intensity.
Authors with expertise in paediatric respiratory medicine, primary care, emergency medicine, behavioural interventions, public health, and evidence synthesis are particularly encouraged to apply. We particularly welcome applications from teams that include early career researchers and researchers based in low- and middle-income countries, recognizing the importance of developing capacity and ensuring diverse perspectives in evidence synthesis.
Timeline: the team taking this on should be ready to begin work within the next quarter with a protocol produced by Q1 2027 and full review by Q1 2028.
What support is available?
There are no funds to pay authors to conduct these reviews. However, Cochrane can offer the following:
- Commissioning support. Working with the Commissioning Editor means expedited proposal acceptance and responses to queries throughout review production.
- Search support. For those who need it Cochrane Information Specialists can run the searches and (capacity dependent) may be able to use machine learning to reduce some of the screening burden.
- Support from Covidence. For priority intervention reviews, Cochrane can refer authors for Covidence premium support. This service involves support from an advisor within Covidence to facilitate data extraction and transfer (capacity dependent).
- Pre-submission support. If required, one of our Evidence Synthesis Development Editors can perform a pre-submission check about 4–6 weeks prior to submission. If you would like this service, you will need to request it several months before you intend on submitting and it will be provided on a first come, first serve, capacity basis.
- Cochrane Engage. Our online Engage platform can be used to find volunteers for various aspects of the work including volunteer co-authors.
Application
To apply, please send an expression of interest to the Commissioning Editor (rparker@cochrane.org) by 31st January 2027 including:
- Proposal form [.docx]
- Analysis plan:
- Full list of summary of findings table outcomes
- Comparisons
- Subgroup analyses planned
- Sensitivity analyses planned
- Short description of suitability of the author team for the proposal – 300 words max.
Panel for assessment
- Commissioning Editor
- Deputy Editor-in-Chief
- Additional editorial staff and experts from the Cochrane Collaboration as required
Producing an impactful review
This review has been commissioned because we think the topic is important and we think there is sufficient new evidence to support a meaningful synthesis. But until we run the search, we don’t know that the synthesis will be meaningful and impactful. If you run your search and discover that there isn't much evidence to synthesize, please reconnect with me and we will explore whether it is worth continuing with a full Cochrane systematic review or not. It may be that your work can be written up as a shorter piece of work for a different journal such as Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods.
