Step Up Asthma Education and Control Program

The overall goal of our program is to reduce the frequency of school absence due to asthma in children in the inner city of Denver, Colorado with the long term goal of expanding statewide. We will do this by carefully analyzing the prevalence and levels of asthma severity in children in the Denver Public School(DPS) system. We will then work with DPS to implement systems to standardize the management of asthma in schools. We will assure that each child has a "medical home" for asthma management by creating a network of care providers for each child that includes teachers, school nurses, primary care physicians and specialist care if needed. Finally, we will create a database of children with asthma in the DPS system, develop an "asthma snapshot" unique to each child, and ultimately develop techniques to reduce the burden of asthma in children who suffer significant school absence due to asthma.