A lack of concordance to asthma therapy, with its attendant morbidity and suggested mortality, may be symptomatic of a breakdown in matching perspectives of patients health beliefs and those of professional health carers. The project will analyse these health perspectives by a unique multidisciplinary approach involving philosophies and methodology from anthropology and psychology. This project aims to investigate the cultural influences on the health beliefs of adolescents with asthma and professional health carers, document the effect of self-efficacy in concordance with therapy and assess the performance of the clinical asthma teams. It is believed that this approach will lead to the development of health care strategies, which will improve concordance with therapy in adolescents with asthma.

This project will be based on a large cross-section study which will has been designed to investigate the nature of asthma patients’ beliefs about their illness and treatment, and the relation of these beliefs to compliance and health status.

The objectives of the study are:-

• To describe and quantify asthma patients’ beliefs about their treatment and about the nature of their illness, particularly their beliefs about the identity of their illness and the associated symptoms, its perceived cause, duration, personal consequences and the degree to which it is perceived to be amenable to cure or control.

• To identify those beliefs which are associated with poor compliance with asthma medication.