Friday, April 19, 2024
4/19/2024
The Wisconsin Department of Health Services’ Asthma Program seeks to reduce the burden of asthma in Wisconsin by improving the reach, quality, effectiveness, and sustainability of asthma control services we have established, with a focus on children and their caregivers. We will enhance our program’s infrastructure and leverage existing and new partnerships to expand the six evidence-based EXHALE strategies statewide, with special focus on high burden communities of Milwaukee and Kenosha Counties and Wisconsin tribal populations. Coordination of care within our target communities will be multi-faceted in order to establish linkages and coordination across public health and health care systems. Our program seeks to expand capacity to deliver and refer people with asthma to asthma self-management education (AS-ME); expand access, referral to and delivery of coordinated services in Milwaukee and Kenosha Counties and tribal communities; improve systems that encourage team-based asthma care; use evaluation and surveillance data for program improvement; ensure more people with asthma receive appropriate medical assessments, medications and devices; establish linkages and coordination across public health and health care systems; and ensure more people with well-controlled asthma. To accomplish these outcomes and reduce asthma disparities, we will implement a comprehensive and coordinated approach spanning both public health and health care sectors. Over the last four years under CDC-RFA-EH14-1404, the Asthma Program and Wisconsin Asthma Coalition (WAC) have successfully implemented strategies in the Wisconsin Asthma Plan 2015-2020 related to infrastructure development, home and school-based interventions, and health systems coordination. Some successfully implemented strategies include the Walkthrough Program; the Asthma Care Program (ACP); collaborations with statewide healthcare organizations to support guidelines-based medical care; and the development of a strong partnership with Medicaid to improve coverage of asthma services. Despite these successes, our program has identified several key strategies within each of the six EXHALE components that must be implemented to increase statewide capacity and improve asthma outcomes. These include enhanced efforts on guidelines-based care among primary care providers, with a focus in tribal communities, and increased collaboration with the housing sector to provide guidance for identifying housing strategies to reduce racial and ethnic health disparities. In addition, our program will continue conversations with Medicaid, health care organizations and health plans to strategize reimbursement opportunities and advance coverage of asthma services through CDC’s 6|18 initiative. Resources from this grant will leverage new and existing partnerships to increase access to asthma services within our targeted high-burden communities. This grant will facilitate linkages between asthma service providers and local, state and regional organizations to address health disparities and fully implement CDC EXHALE strategies.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).
