Asthma Program Priorities and Highlights

Asthma is a complex disease that requires long-term and multifaceted solutions. These include educating, treating, and providing ongoing medical care and monitoring people with the disease, changing behaviors that may lead to asthma or make it worse, and eliminating or avoiding triggers.

The DOH established the Hawaii State Asthma Control Program (HSCAP) in September 2002 by successfully secured funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Upon receipt of this cooperative agreement, the DOH dedicated resources to initiate a program to address asthma from a public health perspective in order to bring about:

• • Focus on asthma-related activity within the state;
• • Increased understanding of asthma-related data and its application to program planning through the development of an ongoing surveillance system;
• • Increased recognition of the potential to use a public health approach to reduce the burden of asthma;
• • Linkages of the state to many agencies and organizations addressing asthma in the population; and
• • Participation in intervention program activities.

The state's public health response to asthma has several key components that include surveillance, education, coalition and workgroup building, advocacy, interventions, and evaluation. To address asthma from a public health perspective, the HSACP continues to focus its efforts on the following three main content areas: surveillance, partnerships, and interventions. The following content areas continue to be driven by an explicit set of guiding principles outlined in the Hawaii Asthma Plan.

Surveillance:
Develop, manage, track, and analyze a uniform set of asthma health status indicators that are derived from a variety of sources (e.g. hospitals, insurers, DOH) and accommodate state and local asthma related data needs through the expansion of the existing Comprehensive State Asthma Surveillance System.

Partnerships:
Engage community partners to increase community readiness to identify gaps in the delivery of asthma-related programs and services in order to improve Hawaii's existing asthma system of care. The workgroups and taskforces have been established statewide to effectively mobilize and carry out the strategies laid out in the Hawaii Asthma Plan.

Interventions:
The HSACP workgroups have developed specific, evidence-based activities aligned to the Hawaii Asthma Plan to meet the needs of Hawaii communities throughout the state. This process has built leadership capacity statewide by encouraging organizations to identify their areas of strength, their roles and responsibilities and their contribution to Hawaii's asthma health system.

Recently, the HSACP has focused its efforts on educating our communities about asthma, how to manage asthma, and how to create and sustain environments that protect us all, especially those with asthma. The HSACP, in collaboration with a wide array of partners and stakeholders has:

• • Expanded quality asthma management initiatives for children in rural areas through Community Health Centers;
• • Promoted awareness and action around air quality and asthma in vog affected areas;
• • Improved asthma management practices in emergency departments and physician's offices and schools;
• • Gained extensive media coverage throughout the year promoting asthma awareness, highlighting key triggers for asthma and providing useful tips on how to minimize exposure; and
• • Reduced exposure to asthma triggers such as cockroaches and tobacco smoke among residents in public housing and increasing awareness of the link between cockroaches and asthma.