(Circulation. 2000;101:e9014.)
© 2000 American Heart Association, Inc.
Cardiovascular News |
Treating High-Risk Asthma Populations
The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute is targeting communities with high death rates associated with asthma in its latest attempt to find ways to combat the burgeoning lung disease. According to the Institute’s director, Dr Claude Lenfant, "We now know enough about asthma so that no one should die from it any more. Yet people are still dying from asthma. Why? Because the information about how best to treat and control it is not being widely used. By forging partnerships with coalitions in high-risk communities, we can bring this information directly to the people who need it most."
The attempt to take asthma education into minority and low-income communities is part of a national plan to reduce the disparate health problems suffered by those groups when compared with the rest of the population. Asthma causes a disproportionately high rate of deaths among members of minority populations, particularly blacks and Hispanics. People with asthma-related conditions crowd emergency departments and fill hospital beds, and asthma is a leading cause of school absenteeism. The cost of asthma in the United States in 1998 was estimated at $11.3 billion.
Those who received the recent round of grants to fight the problem follow.
- Arkansas Asthma Coalition/Arkansas Children’s Hospital Research
Institute, Little Rock, Ark. They target a rural population of
low-income children with persistent asthma.
Central California Asthma Project/San Joaquin Valley Health Consortium, Fresno, Calif. This program is designed to increase asthma awareness and improve asthma care for low-income, rural communities with large populations of