Coordinated federal action to reduce asthma disparities

Asthma disparities, particularly for children in disadvantaged and minority groups, remain a troubling feature of the public health landscape in the US. Federal efforts to develop and foster implementation of evidence-based clinical care guidelines, improve housing conditions, and mitigate the impacts of air pollution have helped improve asthma outcomes for the general population, but the persistence of poor outcomes for low income minority children with asthma suggests that these efforts have not been sufficient. To address this challenge, a working group under the auspices of the federal interagency Children's Environmental Health Task Force has proposed key strategies that leverage existing federal resources and programs. The strategies are distilled from input from federal program representatives, researchers, health care providers, community coalitions, non-profit and advocacy organizations and foundations. These strategies will harness the core federal functions of policy, public health interventions and research and focus on near term actions to identify the children most impacted by asthma disparities and remove the barriers to the delivery of guidelines based care for those children, improve the built environment—primarily homes and schools serving these children, and increase local capacity of their communities to deliver integrated, comprehensive asthma care services. In parallel, the working group has proposed a coordinated research effort to investigate primary prevention approaches to the onset of asthma. While the strategies focus on reducing asthma disparities among children, their implementation will likely benefit people with asthma of all age groups. This presentation will provide an overview of childhood asthma disparities in the US and present the key strategies that have been identified by the Children's Environmental Health Task Force to guide federal coordination and improve asthma outcomes for disproportionately impacted communities.