Community pharmacy intervention to reduce reliever overuse and over-reliance

Overuse of short-acting beta2-agonists (SABA) increases the risk of asthma attacks. Despite the risks associated with SABA overuse, SABA over-reliance and overuse remains common. One of the key drivers of SABA overuse is patient beliefs about treatment. Many patients see asthma as a short-term episodic, rather than long-term, condition, thus reinforcing SABA over-reliance and underuse of inhaled corticosteroids. Assessing individual beliefs about SABA can help identify patients at risk of SABA over-reliance, allowing for early intervention.

We recently developed a brief intervention that involves using a screening questionnaire to assess a patient’s risk of SABA over-reliance, identify the key beliefs driving SABA overuse, and provide behavior change messages to shift these beliefs. Initial testing of the intervention in an online sample of individuals with self-reported asthma showed effectiveness in changing individual’s beliefs. The aim of this proposal is to test this intervention in a sample of physician-diagnosed patients with asthma, and determine the feasibility and acceptability of delivering this intervention via community pharmacists, to inform the design of a larger clinical trial. We aim to estimate participant recruitment and retention rates, evaluate intervention fidelity, the appropriateness and procedures of outcome measures pre- and post-intervention, and obtain feedback on the intervention.