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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Elisa Nicholas, MD, MSPH, Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma, The Children's Clinic Serving Children and Their Families, 2651 Elm Ave, Suite 100, Long Beach, CA 90806, 562-427-4249, egreen@memorialcare.org

Background: Effective asthma management extends well beyond the clinical setting into all areas of the community where children live, learn and play. The Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma (LBACA), a community asthma coalition representing children with asthma in a community with some of the heaviest diesel and automotive traffic in Southern California, and substandard housing and is part of the Community Action to Fight Asthma (CAFA) network focused on policy changes to improve indoor and outdoor air quality.

Methods: LBACA's community “moms” have become a voice for the mitigation of health effects in the statewide goods movement action plans. Related to indoor air quality, LBACA's Community Health Workers' documentation of poor housing conditions of local community participants suffering from asthma through our home visiting asthma intervention program, has helped the process to begin documenting building code violations.

Results: Through these and other efforts, LBACA and its community members have continued to bring the asthma voice to legislative good movement action plans. LBACA has been a proponent for “Changing the Political Will” to address the health impact of goods movement and its strong community participation has rendered it a central voice of the community for local policy issues regarding the same. Funding from CAFA has supported LBACA's policy work furthering community empowerment.

Conclusions: LBACA's coalition-driven policy change enables community groups to fully participate in local policy efforts. Challenges, strategies and lessons learned will be fully delineated in this presentation.

Learning Objectives:

• •Recognize the importance of community partnerships and grassroots community membership for policy work.
• •Describe methods to build coalitions to support asthma-related policy projects related to indoor and outdoor air quality.
• •Acquire information regarding critical policy issues for children with asthma
• •Identify effective strategies for involving grassroots community members in policy formulation

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation