Asthma as a Public Health Enemy

Asthma Public health consists of all the organized measures instituted to accomplish the following for the overall specific population: 1) to prevent disease; 2) to promote health; and 3) to contribute to prolonged lives. The unit of analysis for public health is an entire population, not any one individual in the population. The aim of public health is to establish and maintain conditions that promote health. Rather than focusing the eradication of certain diseases, public health takes a holistic, systematic approach.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the three primary functions of a public health system are as follows: To identify public health priorities and problems through monitoring and assessment of community health and of at-risk populations; To solve recognized health problems at the local, state, and national level through the formulation and implementation of public policies; To ensure that all people have access to cost-effective, appropriate health care, including disease prevention and health promotion services.

Although public health is organized around conventional borders established by local, state, and national governments, public health must attend to cross-border health risks and the impact of globalization on public health policies and practices. Indeed, public health policy addresses forces that originate outside state and national boundaries, such as global environmental change or the distribution and sales of dangerous products. Although asthma is not a contagious disease, it is a public health issue.

Conditions that contribute to the development and recurrence of asthma symptomatology can often be manipulated and modified by human action on environments, a factor that fosters a public response to asthma. Asthma is a more common ailment than in the past, with the numbers approaching one in every 12 people exhibiting symptoms of asthma, which is a potentially fatal lifelong disease.

Resources on evidence-based asthma care are available from the National Asthma Control Initiative (NACI) to patients, clinicians, and others who are able to use the asthma care and control guidelines to assist patients. The National Asthma Education and Prevention Program (NAEPP), an agency coordinated by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), established the NACI in 2008. The primary function of NACI is to ensure asthma guidelines implemented in the community, in health care settings, and in homes, schools, and places of employment.

The agenda to reduce the public health burden of asthma crosses the conventional institutional and governmental boundaries. Local, state, and national public health care leaders, community stakeholders, and patients and their families are all working to improve the control over asthma. Yet, the incidence of asthma remains high. For instance, in 2010 alone, the cost to treat asthma in the U.S. was approximately $20.7 billion.

The dynamics of the disease result in disproportionate rates of asthma and asthma-related disability, hospitalizations, visits to emergency departments, and lost productivity in people with low levels of income, populations of ethnic and racial minority, and children. In order to close the inequities gap and improve outcomes for people who have asthma, it is necessary to align and integrate the public health initiatives with those from clinical, educational, environmental, and occupational arenas.

Outcomes can be improved for all people with asthma, if coalitions are institutionalized to gather available resources and engage diverse perspectives at the community and state levels. Increasing the capacity of communities to become more asthma-friendly and to economically tackle the disease requires a focused effort across levels of government.

Basic steps for communities to take in order to address the threat and incidence of asthma are as follows: 1) Foster stakeholder collaboration through joint task forces and ad hoc coalitions; 2) conduct needs assessments to prioritize identified areas of improvement; 3) ensure better measurement and monitoring of the prevalence, mobidity, mortality, and risk factors of asthma; 4) make continuous improvement and accountability integral to collaborative effort; and 5) work to advance policy that will improve public health care structures, enhance care systems, and create environmental diligence and watch dog factions.

As the national effort extends to the state and community levels, broader patterns of action are required to have an impact on asthma. A comprehensive manual has been published to help with this effort. The publication title is: Guidelines Implementation Panel (GIP) Report: Partners Putting Guidelines into Action. Through this guidelines effort,.