Asthma Friendly Policies

The American Lung Association released an issue brief on Telehealth & Implications for Asthma Care Coverage in Medicaid. The issue brief explores the regulations and policies that govern the use of telehealth in Medicaid programs, how those policies have changed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the experiences of state asthma programs applying telehealth to care for individuals with asthma, and opportunities for state asthma programs to collaborate with their respective Medicaid partners regarding telehealth and asthma coverage.

We discussed this issue brief, as well as our new data on coverage and barriers to guidelines-based asthma care in state Medicaid programs, on a webcast recorded on July 8, 2021. You can view a recording of that event, as well as find all of our resources for the Asthma Guidelines-Based Care Coverage Project, at Lung.org/asthma-care-coverage.

The Standard provides health-based provisions to fill gaps where no property maintenance policy exists and also a complement to the International Property Maintenance Code and other policies already in use by local and state governments and federal agencies for the upkeep of existing homes. The Standard bridges the health and building code communities by putting modern public health information into housing code parlance. The Standard is written in code language to ease its adoption, although we anticipate that states, localities, and other users will tailor it to local conditions. The Standard consists of seven chapters and a section of definitions. The annotated version of the Standard explains the public health rationale for each provision, and provides references and resources for more information. Individually and together, the Standard constitutes minimum performance standards for a safe and healthy home. In developing the Standard we found a variety of provisions that could be added to further enhance the health and safety of the home, but that would be difficult to achieve during property maintenance due to cost or feasibility. We have included those provisions as “stretch” measures for users who want to go above the minimum requirements or who can integrate compliance with the provisions during property renovation. We encourage the adoption of the stretch provisions wherever feasible.