
Improve clinical asthma management by helping health care providers and physician practices adhere to recommended clinical guidelines in diagnosing, assessing, treating, and monitoring patients with asthma;
How can I control my asthma?
Achieving and maintaining asthma control requires providing appropriate medication, addressing environmental factors that cause worsening symptoms, helping patients learn self-management skills, and monitoring over the long term to assess control and adjust therapy accordingly.
What is the goal of the asthma care guide?
The goal of this guide is to help clinicians provide quality care to people who have asthma. Quality asthma care involves not only initial diagnosis and treatment to achieve asthma control, but also long-term regular follow-up care to maintain control.
What is the role of the primary care physician in asthma?
Many patients with asthma are treated in the primary care setting. The primary care physician is therefore in a key position to recognize poorly controlled asthma and to improve asthma management for these patients.
What is the structure of an asthma program in a state?
STRUCTURE FOR ASTHMA PROGRAM IN HEALTH DEPARTMENT STAFFING SHDs vary in their organizational structure. Functionally, a state asthma program is best located within the division of the SHD that addresses disease control and prevention (particularly noninfectious and chronic disease control), environmental health, or health promotion.

Why is asthma management important?
Why asthma management is important. Medication is essential to manage asthma well. Good asthma care also involves treating other conditions that can affect asthma, such as hay fever. A healthy lifestyle can help you stay in control of your asthma symptoms and feel well.
What are the aims of asthma treatment for the professional?
The main goals of asthma management are to optimize control of asthma symptoms and reduce the risk of asthma exacerbations, while minimizing medication adverse effects.
How can healthcare professionals educate patients about asthma management?
A bedside asthma education kit might include:a placebo inhaler;a sample spacer for demonstration;a sample peak flow meter;instructional flyers and brochures that the patient can take home;flip charts and visual aids;a list of local resources including any asthma support groups that are available in your area; and.More items...
How Does asthma affect the healthcare system?
The asthmatic patients often use emergency care, sometimes requiring hospital admission, and have a high number of school days missed and workdays lost. In addition, it can cause early permanent disability and premature death. The economic burden of asthma is an important measure of its effect on society.
What is the treatment and management of asthma?
Quick-relief inhalers (bronchodilators) quickly open swollen airways that are limiting breathing. In some cases, allergy medications are necessary. Long-term asthma control medications, generally taken daily, are the cornerstone of asthma treatment.
What are the three goals of acute asthma management?
What are the overall goals of asthma management according to the Global Strategy for Asthma Management and Prevention?Achieve and maintain control of asthma symptoms.Maintain normal activity levels, including exercise.Maintain pulmonary function as close to normal as possible.Prevent asthma exacerbations.More items...•
What health professionals are involved in asthma care?
Healthcare professionals who can help you with your asthmaGP (general practitioner)Asthma nurse, asthma nurse specialist or practice nurse.Pharmacist.School nurse.Respiratory specialist.Respiratory physiologist.Respiratory physiotherapist.Paediatric asthma nurses.More items...
What would be important to teach the patient with asthma?
Clinicians should teach patients asthma self-management based on basic asthma facts, self-monitoring techniques, the role of medications, inhaler use, and environmental control measures. Treatment goals should be developed for the patient and family.
What are the key patient education considerations when nursing a patient with asthma?
Patient teaching is a critical component of care for patients with asthma. Teach patient and family about asthma (chronic inflammatory), purpose and action of medications, triggers to avoid and how to do so, and proper inhalation technique. Instruct patient and family about peak-flow monitoring.
What impact asthma has on society as it relates to the business of health care and the use of resources?
Asthma costs the U.S. economy more than $80 billion annually in medical expenses, days missed from work and school, and deaths, according to research published online in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society. The cost of asthma is one of the most important measures of the burden of the disease.
How does asthma impact development?
Asthma can cause a number of complications, including: Severe asthma attacks that require emergency treatment or hospital care. Permanent decline in lung function. Missed school days or getting behind in school.
What are the recommendations for managing asthma?
Updated recommendations for managing asthma include an expanded section on childhood asthma (with an additional age group), new guidance on medications, new recommendations on patient education in settings beyond the physician’s office, and new advice for controlling environmental factors that can cause asthma symptoms.
Who developed the asthma guidelines?
The guidelines were developed by an expert panel commissioned by the National Asthma Education and Prevention Program Coordinating Committee, which is coordinated by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health.
What is the EXHALE package?
The EXHALE technical package represents a group of strategies, which, based on the best available evidence, can improve asthma control and reduce health care costs. It is intended as a resource to inform decision-making in communities, organizations, and states.
What is evidence based asthma care?
When healthcare providers—including health professionals, asthma educators or patient advocates—deliver asthma care based on the evidence-based asthma guidelines, patients can experience better health outcomes and quality of life.
Can asthma be active?
You can be active and healthy with asthma and do all the things that you want to do. Don't let asthma hold you back. Talk to your doctor about taking control of your asthma today. Below are six steps along with tips and resources to improve your asthma control:
Do asthma patients need medication?
Most people with asthma need one or more medicines to help control their disease. Work with your doctor, pharmacist, or asthma educator to make sure you are using the medication the right way. Learn the difference between quick-relief and controller medications.
What is asthma care?
Asthma care involves not only a proper diagnosis and treatment, but also long-term, regular follow-up medicalcare that helps achieve and maintain control of your asthma so that you can lead a full and active life.
Can you have bronchial thermoplasty if you have asthma?
9 Most individuals ages 18 years and older with uncontrolled, moderate to severe persistent asthma should not undergo bronchi al thermoplasty because the benefits are small, the risks are moderate, and the long-term outcomes are uncertain.
Why are asthma guidelines important?
Overview. Asthma guidelines play an important role in guiding health care providers and patients by providing evidence-based recommendations for asthma management. The National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) supports the development of clinical practice guidelines based on the best available science that specialists ...
What is the best medicine for asthma?
Using inhaled corticosteroids when needed for recurrent wheezing or persistent asthma. This medicine helps control inflammation, or swelling, in your airways over time. Using long-acting antimuscarinic agents (LAMAs) with inhaled corticosteroids for long-term asthma management.
How to reduce exposure to indoor asthma triggers?
Using one or more methods to reduce exposure to indoor asthma triggers. Immunotherapy: Using allergy shots which contain very small amounts of allergens to treat some people with allergic asthma. Immunotherapy may make your body less sensitive to allergens (such as grass or ragweed pollen).
Why do we use fractional exhaled nitric oxide?
Using fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) tests to help manage asthma or to help confirm a diagnosis in some patients when the diagnosis is unclear. This test involves breathing into a tube connected to a machine that measures the amount of nitric oxide, which can increase when there is airway inflammation.
What is the Allies against Asthma?
Allies Against Asthma, a program of the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, was a national initiative to improve asthma control for children and adolescents. This site provides tools and resources that may be useful to other asthma coalitions and programs addressing asthma
What is the National Asthma Educator Certification Board?
The National Asthma Educator Certification Board promotes optimal asthma management and quality of life among individuals with asthma, their families and communities by advancing excellence in asthma education through the Certified Asthma Educator process.
What is the EPA partnership?
EPA supports this network in partnership with Allies Against Asthma, a program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It provides community-based asthma programs with a platform for real-time learning that can drive ongoing improvement of asthma care.
What is the book Clearing the Air?
Clearing the Air: Asthma and Indoor Air Exposure—Executive Summary is a book that contains information about the role that indoor air pollution plays in asthma causation, prevalence, triggering, and severity.
What is AS-ME in medical?
This technical brief identifies the components that comprise asthma self-management education (AS-ME) packages used in the United States, and examines, compares, and organizes their key characteristics and available research to enable a better understanding of current practice and future needs.
What is the EXHALE package?
The EXHALE technical package represents a group of strategies, which, based on the best available evidence, can improve asthma control and reduce health care costs. It is intended as a resource to inform decision-making in communities, organizations, and states.
Is asthma genomics progressing?
Advances in asthma genomics are occurring rapidly. Although these advances have not yet caused a change in the methods of asthma prevention, diagnosis, or treatment, new strategies to prevent and manage asthma are likely to be developed within the near future.
What is asthma management?
Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease characterized by recurrent episodic inflammation of the airways that results in narrowing of the airways and bronchial hyperresponsiveness.
How does asthma control?
The management of asthma focuses on preventing or treating symptoms to reduce disease exacerbations and achieve or maintain asthma control through symptom recognition and treatment and the avoidance of triggers of exacerbation. 2 Because the progression of asthma is based on triggers, it is important for patients to understand the disease process and identify the allergens that trigger asthma attacks so they can better manage their symptoms through treatment and avoidance. 2 However, according to a call-back survey by the CDC, only about 77% of adults with asthma were taught what to do during an asthma attack and less than 67% were taught how to recognize the signs and symptoms of asthma ( Figure 120 ). 20
How can asthma be used as an action plan?
With periodic monitoring, open communication, and guidance from their doctor and pharmacist, a patient can use their asthma action plan to handle mild episodes and prevent serious episodes, ED visits, and hospitalizations.
How does patient education help asthma?
Patient education can aid patients in recognizing the warning signs of asthma attacks or worsening asthma, understanding how and when to properly use their prescribed treatment, and adhering to their asthma plan. 20.
Why are biologics and other novel medications for asthma important?
Because cost is a significant barrier to treatment, guidelines are needed to potentially curtail the use of newer and expensive treatment options, limiting their use based on individual patient need .
What is the role of a pharmacist in asthma?
Managed care pharmacists are ideally situated to unite the shared goals of all asthma healthcare providers: to improve treatment and management strategies to ensure that patients receive safe, optimal, ...
Why are pharmacists important in managed care?
Pharmacists in managed care organizations are able to unite the common goals of various healthcare providers: to improve management strategies to make sure that patients are able to obtain safe, appropriate, and cost-effective therapy. The surge in classes of agents in development combined with the multitude of single and combination therapy ...

Centers For Disease Control and Prevention
Agency For Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
- This document is designed to increase the primary care provider’s knowledge of hazardous substances in the environment and to promote the adoption of medical practices that help evaluate and care for potentially exposed patients.
Medical Organizations—Respiratory Diseases
- This site offers information to help you learn more about childhood asthma and allergies. This site provides information about prevention and treatment of diseases, including asthma, through education, research, and communication. The American Thoracic Society fosters the gathering, evaluating, and disseminating of scientific and clinical information. This Web page provides clini…
Training Tool For Health Professionals
- This slide presentation describes the process through which inhalant allergens can affect individuals with asthma; describes the types of inhalant allergens that can affect individuals with asthma; reviews NAEPP recommendations for the evaluation of inhalant allergens for persons with asthma, and reviews NAEPP recommendations for the environmental control of inhalant all…
Videos
- CDC’s National Asthma Control Program developed this set of videos to help public health professionals explain proper inhaler techniques to people with asthma and to their families and caregivers. These step-by-step instructions are presented in English and in Spanish. Use the videos at your office and provide the website address so that more peopl...
Other
- National Environmental Education Foundation’s “Environmental Management of Asthma: Guidelines for Health Care Providers” Top of Page