Coordination of Federal Asthma Activities

Executive Summary

October 2001

The Children's Health Act of 2000 (P.L. 106-310) requires the Director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), through the National Asthma Education and Prevention Program (NAEPP) Coordinating Committee (CC), to identify all federal programs that carry out asthma-related activities, develop a federal plan for responding to asthma, and submit recommendations to the Congress on ways to strengthen and improve coordination of asthma-related activities of the federal government. The following report has been prepared by the Federal Liaison Group on Asthma (FLGA), a subcommittee of the NAEPP-CC, with coordination by the NHLBI. The report was submitted to the members of the full NAEPP-CC, and comments received from them have been incorporated.

An FY 2001 Inventory of Federal Asthma Activities has been prepared by the FLGA and is appended to this report.

A blueprint for planning federal asthma activities has already been established with the May 2000 publication of two important, interrelated documents: Action Against Asthma: A Strategic Plan for the Department of Health and Human Services and Asthma and the Environment: A Strategy to Protect Children. Specific national health objectives for asthma are also outlined in Healthy People 2010.

Recommendations for strengthening federal coordination of asthma activities in the future are addressed in this report and will focus on the following five goals:

• Discover ways to prevent asthma attacks and minimize uncontrolled asthma by improving understanding of the causes of asthma and its exacerbations;
• Gather, analyze, and disseminate data at the national, state, and local levels on a variety of asthma parameters, including morbidity, mortality, health-service utilization, federal expenditures, and quality of life;
• Identify and overcome barriers to full implementation of the NAEPP Guidelines;
• Enable optimal functioning of children with asthma in school and child-care settings;
• Develop and evaluate community-based interventions to address the asthma problem, particularly in high-risk communities.

The FLGA is committed to achieving and maintaining effective coordination that respects the unique contributions of individual agencies, facilitates exchange of information to avoid duplication, enables identification of opportunities for collaboration, and ensures that consistent messages about asthma are developed and disseminated. Much coordination of federal asthma activities already exists, and plans for expansion are under way. The FLGA will continue to explore current and planned asthma activities in greater depth in each of the five goal areas and seek new opportunities for interagency coordination and collaboration.

Appendix:

2001 Inventory of Federal Asthma Activities

Preface

The Inventory of Federal Asthma Activities was prepared by the Federal Liaison Group on Asthma with coordination by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health. The agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services support a wide range of asthma research, education, information dissemination, and service-related activities. Other federal agencies with a commitment to asthma include the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, all of which participate in the Federal Liaison Group on Asthma. The Federal Liaison Group on Asthma is a subcommittee of the NHLBI National Asthma Education and Prevention Program Coordinating Committee.

The Inventory is organized first by the major federal departments with an interest in asthma, and then alphabetically by the agencies within each department. Each agency section begins with a mission statement and continues with activity summaries that are categorized by four focus, i.e., priority, areas – public health practice/intervention, reducing disparities, research, and surveillance. Healthy People 2010 objectives are indicated, where appropriate, following each activity description.

This comprehensive inventory of current federal asthma efforts reflects the strength and breadth of the federal commitment to reducing the asthma epidemic.

The complete report is available as a PDF file (146 K)

The appendix to this report is also available as a PDF file (320 K)