197420 We Can Do Better: Improving Asthma Outcomes in America

Tuesday, November 10, 2009: 4:30 PM

Julia Gray, MPH , Public Health Foundation, Washington, DC
Jacalyn Carden, MS, CAE , Public Health Foundation, Washington, DC
Jennifer Stanley, MA , Public Health Foundation, Washington, DC
John W. Moran, PhD, CQM , Public Health Foundation, Washington, DC
Ron Bialek, MPP , Public Health Foundation, Washington, DC
  
There is much effort going into mitigating asthma in the U.S. and yet asthma has increased over the past two decades. This project used quality improvement (QI) techniques in a group setting at three U.S. regional meetings held in November and December 2008. Seventy-two participants from eight states in the Midwest, Northwest, and Southeast participated. Participants included public health and health care professionals who had a particular interest in asthma and were identified by our point-of-contact at the state health department. This project sought to identify (1) strategies that worked to prevent and control asthma; (2) strategies that have failed to achieve desired results; (3) characteristics (e.g. social, political, and community contexts) contributing to and/or facilitating success, and (4) characteristics confounding desired results and/or success. Using QI exercises, participants generated over 900 strategies and characteristics that contribute to successful asthma prevention and control. Some categories were similar across meetings and were combined to reduce the total number of strategy categories to 14, and the total number of characteristic categories was reduced to ten. This inventory represents a first step toward understanding and developing a protocol or protocols that can be used in any asthma prevention and control setting. Under a second phase of this asthma prevention and control initiative, PHF plans to build on what was learned from the three regional meetings using a mini-collaborative and/or team structure and QI methodology to help three to five communities achieve measurable improvement in asthma prevention and/or control.

Learning Objectives:
By the end of this presentation, the audience will be able to: 1) List strategies and contextual characteristics that contribute to the successful prevention and control of asthma episodes; 2) Identify two quality improvement (QI) tools (e.g., Affinity Diagramming, Process Decision Program Chart, Start-Stop-Continue Matrix) that can be used to solve public health problems; and 3) Describe the benefits of integrating QI tools into their public health work.

Keywords: Asthma, Quality Improvement

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: Ms. Gray joined PHF staff in December 2007 as the Program Administrator for the National Public Health Performance Standards Program (NPHPSP). She is responsible for conducting day-to-day operations for the NPHPSP reporting system, administering and updating content on two web resource portals, and assisting with other performance management and quality improvement projects. Prior to coming to PHF, Ms. Gray worked at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the Office of Radiation and Indoor Air as an Association of Schools of Public Health Fellow from July 2006 to August 2007. She assisted with the coordination of the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air, an international public-private partnership, and provided assistance with other national indoor environment initiatives on asthma and school health. Julia also spent a summer working at the National Cancer Institute in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics in Rockville, MD, where she completed a retrospective data assessment of an environmental exposure to DDT to a rural population in Alabama in the 1950s. Ms. Gray earned a M.P.H. in occupational environmental epidemiology from the University of Michigan in 2006 and received a B.S. in biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2004.
Any relevant financial relationships? Yes

Name of Organization Clinical/Research Area Type of relationship
AstraZeneca Asthma PHF received a charitable contribution from AstraZeneca to facilitate three meetings. AstraZeneca had no influence over the meeting design, invited participants, content or facilitation, and did not influence the findings provided in the summary report.

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

See more of: Advancing Asthma Policy Change
See more of: Community Health Planning and Policy Development