Asthma Program Manager

Asthma, a lung disease, affects over 25 million people living in the United States, including 1 in 11 children. It causes 3 in 5 people living with asthma to limit their physical activity or miss days at school and work. Asthma is also expensive, costing the nation $56 billion each year.

On World Asthma Day (the first Tuesday of May) and throughout May, people with asthma and organizations dedicated to asthma control and education join together to increase awareness about asthma and improve the lives of all people with asthma.

This toolkit features information for people with asthma, schools, public health practitioners, and others grouped in one place for Asthma Awareness Month use. Use the Asthma Awareness Toolkit to raise awareness today!

Introducing the Wisconsin Asthma Plan, 2015-2020, a blueprint for addressing asthma in Wisconsin for the next five years. This plan represents the best efforts of Wisconsin Asthma Coalition's (WAC) leadership and members to develop a strategic plan to reduce the burden of asthma as a public health problem in Wisconsin.

The WAC has made great strides in improving asthma management since the release of the Wisconsin Asthma Plan 2003, but the burden of disease and its disproportionate impact remains a priority. The intent of the Wisconsin Asthma Plan, 2015-2020 is to focus activities on disparately impacted populations in Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin Asthma Plan 2015-2020 is divided into four priority areas that are in direct alignment with the four components of care outlined in the NIH asthma guidelines. The four priority areas include:

• Routine health care
• Pharmaceutical care
• Education
• Environment

ABSTRACT:

Poor quality housing is an ongoing environmental injustice placing a significant burden on low-income and minority families. The Green & Healthy Homes Initiative (GHHI) in Baltimore, MD, grew out of the historical healthy homes work of the Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning, an organization dedicated to using housing as a platform for health to ensure environmental and socialjustice for families and children in low-income communities. GHHI’s Healthy Homes Demonstration Project utilized the standards and practices created by GHHI: A Holistic Housing Assessment coupled with environmental health education and combined as an integrated environmental health and energy housing intervention for children with asthma, ages 2–14. The project braids resources from healthy homes, lead hazard reduction, weatherization, and energy efficiency projects to form a single multi-component, multi-factorial intervention. Findings from the health surveys at intake and six months after the intervention provide evidence of the impact on the reduction of asthma symptomatic episodes, emergency room visits, and hospitalizations, while showingimprovementsin school attendance and parents’ work attendance. Findings will provide evidence that improved health outcomes and more stable and productive homes in primarily African American, low-income neighborhoods are related to the mitigation of asthma triggers and home-based environmental health hazards. Upstream integrated housing interventions are an effective means to improve health, economic, and social outcomes for children diagnosed with asthma.