CDC’s National Asthma Control Program and its partners developed EXHALE, a set of six strategies that each contribute to better health and improved quality of life for people with asthma.
As a model anti-racist organization, NACDD promotes social justice and wellbeing so that communities can build healthier futures.
These resources will help you center equity and social justice in your EXHALE work.
Black, Hispanic, and American Indian and Alaska Native people have the highest rates of asthma, hospital visits, and asthma-related deaths. Disparities are caused by social and structural disadvantages. Learn more with these resources from our partners.
State Asthma Programs are well positioned to foster individual and communal action to advance health equity. The NACDD Social Justice Framework offers examples of steps that will help advance your EXHALE work. Reflect on the examples and identify the steps you will take at the individual, interpersonal, organizational, community, and policy levels to advance social justice and health equity through your asthma program.
Use these ideas and resources to strengthen equity as you promote EXHALE.
Education on asthma self-management: Helping people with asthma (and their families) use asthma medications correctly, avoid exposure to asthma triggers, and manage their asthma symptoms can reduce hospitalizations, missed school or work days, and healthcare costs.
Asthma self-management education requires repetition and reinforcement. All care providers have a role in providing asthma self-management education, which is best supported through integrated programs that incorporate clinic-based, home-based, and school-based elements. Effective asthma education empowers patients to request guidelines-based care.
Example Equity Approaches
Resources
X-tinguishing Smoking and Exposure to Secondhand Smoke Among People with Asthma: Helping people quit smoking and avoid secondhand smoke can reduce hospitalizations, missed school, healthcare costs, and how often they have to use rescue medicine. Building strategic partnerships and understanding cultural differences can help you reach people with the greatest need.
Example Equity Approaches
Resources
Home Visits for Trigger Reduction and Asthma Self-Management Education: Improving access to evidence-based home visiting services can help people manage their asthma. When asthma is controlled, hospital visits, missed school or work, and healthcare costs can all decrease.
Example Equity Approaches
Resources
Achievement of Guidelines-Based Medical Management Among People with Asthma: Healthcare providers and their teams can improve the care they give people with asthma by using national guidelines for medical management of asthma. Asthma programs can support healthcare providers by using the below equity approaches.
Example Equity Approaches
Resources
Linkages and Coordination of Care Across Settings Among People with Asthma: When people with asthma have a team of care providers who are connected and coordinated, their health outcomes and quality of life can improve. Employers, hospitals, schools, childcare centers, and at-home care providers can work together to strengthen the support for people with asthma.
Example Equity Approaches
Resources
Environmental Policies or Best Practices to Reduce Asthma Triggers: Helping people with asthma live, learn, work, and play in healthy environments can improve their health outcomes and quality of life. Policies that support people who are most affected by asthma can have the greatest impact.
Example Equity Approaches
Resources