Louisiana Department of Health's (WAL) Asthma Control Initiative - Although Louisiana’s burden of asthma does not rank as the top in the nation, the state has historically ranked as the worst state when it comes to health ranking. Many of the health measures that are tracked through the United Health Ranking impacting asthma are tobacco use, obesity, economic hardship, access to care and preventable hospitalizations that contribute to the prevalence of asthma in Louisiana. Asthma is a serious chronic disease and due to the state’s geographic layout, vast agricultural areas, humid climate, and petrochemical plants, efforts to combat the disease are significant to those who are diagnosed. The Louisiana Asthma Management and Prevention Program was previously implemented in the Office of Public Health (OPH) Bureau of Chronic Disease Prevention and Healthcare Access (BCDPHA) through the Centers for Disease Control funding in 2009. BCDPHA also branded as Well-Ahead Louisiana (WAL) will utilize and expand on several strategies, advancing health equity to further educate and benefit the communities in Louisiana where there is a high asthma prevalence. The strategies are designed to implement best practices for those who have the most challenges with understanding how to manage asthma and oftentimes do not have adequate access to preventive care. Louisiana has many low-income and vulnerable communities, and this presents the need to focus efforts on chronic diseases in the state with a major focus on asthma. The Covid-19 pandemic increased awareness about the symptoms and treatment of asthma due to numerous citizens being diagnosed and experiencing what persons with asthma have long experienced when their condition has reached a severe status. The National Heart Lung Blood Institute Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Asthma supports implementing self-management and asthma education interventions that change patient, school, healthcare, and environmental behaviors in multiple venues where the asthmatics quality of space and life is impacted daily. The goal of seeking funding through the Asthma EXHALE grant is to provide self-management education, medication adherence, improve asthma control, address environmental conditions, implement and enforce policy where it will improve outcomes for asthma patients and their families. A major focus of WAL’s Asthma Control program and efforts will be to provide improved current evidence-based asthma strategies and tools/trainings to healthcare clinicians for addressing asthma among the state’s most vulnerable populations. It is important to educate providers and equip them with tools and programs that remove the guesswork when assisting patients by improving their ability to self-manage asthma. Implementing strategies to address chronic asthma at discharge from the emergency department, clinic, and hospital in-patient stay allows to proactively contact the patient at discharge rather than rely on the patient to contact the primary care physician following an asthma exacerbation. By providing asthma education to school nurses through a collaboration with the Louisiana School Nurses Organization (LSNO), allows school nurses to assist WAL and its partners by increasing knowledge of students diagnosed with asthma. In review of the Louisiana state landscape, asthma impacts many adults in the occupational setting and improving the quality of life of those working in industrial, agricultural, business, education and an enormous number of rural settings will be important to ensure decreased emergency department and clinic over utilization. WAL’s Asthma Control strategies ensure collaboration with champions of asthma and chronic disease to better navigate the state and the various populations that are most impacted. WAL’s efforts will work to strengthen existent implemented policies that work to protect asthmatics while providing life changing asthma education to make citizens happy and successful where they live, work and play.
