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)
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