Coalition Partnerships Providing Asthma Education beyond US borders

Background: Asthma is a global problem affecting over 300 million people with a disparate effect on the poor and underserved. The mission of the Asthma Coalition of Long Island (ACLI) is to decrease asthma related emergency department visits and hospitalizations in children. Operationally, our focus has been on educational interventions geared to empower the next generation with the tools necessary to improve their asthma control. Girls Scouts (GS) USA is national U.S. based organization with sister organizations worldwide. Methods: An interactive, age appropriate, bilingual educational tool was developed by the ACLI which became the G.S. Asthma Awareness Patch program: Helping Girls Breathe Easier. Once adopted by GS USA it became accessible online. Program utilization and outreach has been tracked in 3 ways: requests for print workbooks, complete program downloads and by number of GS patches awarded. Results: 25,000 print copies of the bilingual edition of the workbook have been distributed. There were 181,706 downloads of the program in English and 4,326 downloads of the Spanish language version. Ninety four percent of the downloads were from sites throughout the United States; 6 % from foreign based sites. Over 21,500 girls earned the asthma awareness patch. Conclusions: Organizations with different mandates, missions, objectives, organizational structures and membership can partner to create added value when working together on a single advocacy issue. The utilization of this program confirms that asthma is an important issue for girls worldwide and that accurate sources of information on asthma are actively being sought.