Health Care Setting

A key goal of the MaineHealth AH! Program is to improve the clinical care of asthma by supporting the consistent use of nationally developed guidelines in the diagnosis and management of asthma.

To support this effort, the AH! Program created this flip chart summarizing current recommendations for asthma care. The AH! Asthma Health Program efforts have been fueled by a multidisciplinary group of clinicians representing nursing, respiratory therapy, public health, primary care physicians, pulmonary and allergy/immunology subspecialists. This chart was adapted from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)National Asthma Education and Prevention Program Expert Panel Report 3: Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Asthma, 2007. Some recommendations reflect the local expert opinion of the AH! Asthma Health Program clinicians.

These guidelines were developed for healthcare professionals who provide asthma care to patients.

To order a spiral bound copy, contact Donna Levi at levid@mainehealth.org

This is a series of asthma education tools for use by physicians and their staff to train patients to manage their own asthma. It uses problem-based learning and provides practice to providers.

This workshop was designed to help health care professionals enhance the quality of care they deliver by educating them about specific environmental asthma triggers and how they affect asthma outcomes as well as the appropriate remediation strategies.  The program also provides HCPs with information about the local resources that their patients may find useful such as asthma education classes, tenants rights and human services resources, pest control, community-level advocacy (ie. reducing neighborhood diesel idling), air quality monitor tools, etc.

By improving HCPs knowledge of the environmental issues and the wide variety of strategies for reducing exposure they can provide more comprehensive care, are more likely to communicate these issues to their patients, and are better equipped to provide meaningful information to their patients that will increase the patient and families capacity for successful self management.  

Please contact the Clean Air Council if you would like your office or clinic to receive this training workshop or would like any relevant information, hand-outs, triggers checklist, etc.