244930 Lessons from Baltimore GHHI - Impact on Asthma Control

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Ruth Ann Norton , Green and Healthy Homes Initiative (GHHI), Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning, Baltimore, MD
With asthma cases skyrocketing nationally and thousands of school and work days missed each year due to asthma-related causes, successful asthma management has emerged as one of today's major public health challenges. While ongoing proper administration of asthma medication is a critical piece, initial results from Baltimore's Green and Healthy Homes Initiative (GHHI), a new home intervention program model, suggest that this approach may prove to be a cost-effective, long-term answer. Full Green and Healthy Homes Interventions were performed in the homes of 140 asthma-diagnosed children, each of whom historically racked up $20,000 to $40,000 in medical costs each year due to emergency room and urgent care visits. Post-intervention, including a home visit by an asthma specialist to explain the Interventions and how to regularly maintain the home to optimize health and safety, these costly medical expenses were essentially eliminated. Only one child reported a single visit to the ER, and this was due to an illness contracted at school (not a home-induced environmental response.) Better yet, not only does GHHI create savings by preventing ongoing asthma-related medical costs but it simultaneously addresses numerous other health and safety issues such as lead poisoning prevention, injury prevention, weatherization and energy efficiency. Reduced energy costs shift dollars from the family budget away from utility payments towards necessities like food and medicine. Through the use of a new platform to create a single intake and intervention system, GHHI speeds assistance to families, boosts government efficiency and builds real cross-sector, public-private service delivery partnerships. GHHI is changing public policy by building the case for leverage and efficiency, and revolutionizing the way both government and philanthropy invest in programs. GHHI is now active in 15 pilot sites across the nation and is the only initiative collaboratively supported by the White House, HUD, DOE, and CDC.

Learning Areas:
Administer health education strategies, interventions and programs
Chronic disease management and prevention
Environmental health sciences
Public health or related public policy

Learning Objectives:
1. Be able to identify and quantify the health-based benefits of Green & Healthy Homes interventions. 2. Identify individual programs that could be braided into a Green & Healthy Homes Initiative intervention model. 3. Define specific home interventions that contribute toward the reduction or elimination of asthma-related ER visits and hospitalizations.

Keywords: Public Health Movements, Asthma

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I manage health-based housing programs funded by HUD, CDC, philanthropy and local and state government, and designed the national initiative which is now supported by the CDC.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

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.