Patient education is an essential component of asthma management. The current paradigm of asthma education has moved away from the 'information-transfer' programmes that characterized earlier approaches and that were shown to be largely ineffective, to approaches that promote self-management education. In this article, we review the most recent research studies that discuss the impact of self-management education on health outcomes for asthma patients in the primary care setting.Although there are several recent examples of asthma education practices in primary healthcare, they are mostly with community-based pharmacists and largely confined to adults. Further research is clearly required especially in relation to children and adolescents. A key aspect of optimizing asthma self-management education for patients is the need for more effective training interventions for primary care providers, and structural and organizational reform based on good evidence.Health outcomes may be improved if there is greater consistency between the various different primary healthcare providers who manage children and families with asthma. There may be value in extending the concept of multidisciplinary care to include partnerships with community groups and organizations to ensure that asthma educational messages are reinforced across a variety of settings.