The Aberdeen Area Tribal Chairmen’s Health Board, through the Northern Plains Tobacco Prevention Project (NPTPP) will launch the first regional asthma education and prevention campaign targeting both rural and urban American Indian tribal members, as well as tribally based health professionals. The Northern Plains Asthma Prevention Campaign will increase the awareness of asthma triggers in the home and basic measures of mitigation. The campaign will work toward the mission of improving the indoor air quality in the homes of American Indian children with asthma, which is congruent with the EPA’s strategic goal to increase the number of Americans experiencing healthier indoor air in homes, schools, and office buildings. The Northern Plains Asthma Prevention Campaign represents the first initiative to collaborate with multiple partners across and between tribal boundaries to provide environmental asthma trigger management education and which will promote the capacity development of tribal health care professionals toward assisting patients identify and mitigate asthma triggers in the home. The campaign will provide education on the management and prevention of environmental asthma triggers to a population of almost 200,000 tribal members residing on 17 reservations and two urban Indian service areas in North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa. The NPTPP will provide effective outreach by merging evidenced based practice with a culturally competent approach. Three measurable outcomes will be achieved as a result of this initiative:
•Increased knowledge of in-home asthma triggers and methods of trigger mitigation among American Indian tribal members and health professionals residing in the Northern Plains, as evidenced by a statistically significant increase in knowledge gained from community and health professional education by 9/30/09.
•Increased number of health care programs committed to conducting in-home asthma assessments, as evidenced by a 25% increase in the rate of in-home assessments conducted by health care programs from 10/1/06 to 9/30/09.
•Reduction in the rate of hospitalizations and emergency department visits as a result of asthma, as evidenced by a statistically significant decrease in pediatric visits among health care units containing case management staff/ programs trained to provide in-home asthma assessments by 9/30/09.