Educating teachers about chronic diseases like epilepsy can help combat the stigma and protect students suffering from it, ASU researchers said Wednesday.

David Wodrich, associate professor at the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education, said the goal of his research on epilepsy in grade school is to bolster teacher confidence in dealing with it.

“There are a lot of things that could potentially erode the confidence of teachers,” he said. “[Epilepsy] is oftentimes really difficult for a teacher to deal with.”

Researchers will begin surveying teachers of epileptic children within the next week, a partner on the project said.

Dr. Randa Jarrar, a neurology physician at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, said the hospital will be recruiting teachers of patients with epilepsy to take a survey the research team developed.

“We’re going to analyze [the results] to see what percentage of teachers are confident with their knowledge of epilepsy,” she said. “Hopefully that will be the seed for future research projects.”

This project is central to the mission of the hospital and especially the neurology department, Jarrar said.

Catherine Gay, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Psychology, said she worked with Wodrich and Jarrar to develop a series of questions to ask teachers of children with epilepsy that would help them gather results.

“The ultimate goal is to find out how much teachers know about epilepsy,” she said.

If the results show that teachers possess only a small amount of knowledge on the disease, Gay said a secondary project to develop teaching materials may begin.

“There is a pretty significant stigma attached to [epilepsy],” she said.

If a teacher is knowledgeable about both the conditions and the stigma associated with epilepsy, he or she could educate other children in the class about it, Gay said.

Wodrich, a former psychologist at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, said this research is a way to satisfy an important unmet need.

“This is an important area,” he said. “Not many people are interested in the combination of chronic illnesses and school.”

The epilepsy research is part of a larger set of studies that concern several other chronic illnesses like diabetes, asthma and cancer, and how they affect children in school.

Eventually, the team would like to understand what the barriers are for students with common chronic illnesses and what steps people, especially teachers, can take to remove those barriers, Wodrich said.

“We have a large grant [being reviewed] by the federal government now that would help us develop a Web-based program,” he said.

Currently, the project is funded solely by the Epilepsy Foundation of America, which began sponsoring it in June, he said.

“This was part of one of the important missions they have — to make sure children with epilepsy are treated well at school,” Wodrich said.

Reach the reporter at ndgilber@asu.edu.