Manage Asthma at School
School staff and families can play an important role in helping students with asthma manage their disease at school by creating asthma-friendly schools. Asthma-friendly schools adopt policies and procedures and coordinate student services to better serve students with asthma.
Asthma is a leading chronic illness among children and youth in the United States. In 2006, 5.6 million school-aged children and youth were reported to currently have asthma and 3.1 million had an asthma episode or attack within the previous year.
Burden of Asthma in Schools
On average, in a classroom of 30 children, about 3 are likely to have asthma. Asthma is one of the leading causes of school absenteeism. In 2003, an estimated 12.8 million school days were missed due to asthma among the more than 4 million children who reported at least one asthma attack in the preceding year.
Take Action
School staff and families can play an important role in helping students with asthma manage their disease at school by creating asthma-friendly schools.
Asthma-friendly schools provide:
appropriate school health services for students with asthma, ensuring that students take their medicines and learn to use them when appropriate. - asthma education for students with asthma and awareness programs for students, school staff, parents, and families.
- a safe and healthy school environment to reduce asthma triggers, combined with safe and enjoyable physical education and activities for students with asthma.
Improvements are most effective when they are coordinated within schools and with the community. Improved asthma management can result in improved attendance and performance at school.
Many schools are becoming more asthma-friendly by making changes that enable students to successfully manage their asthma and fully participate in all school activities. Changes to create asthma-friendly schools are occurring at all levels: classroom, health room, school, and district.
Resources for Success
CDC's Initiating Change: Creating an Asthma-Friendly School toolkit is designed to help advocates, such as teachers, school health staff, parents and families, create asthma-friendly schools. The toolkit contains two sets of resources:
- A short, inspirational video, Creating an Asthma-Friendly School (
13:44 mins), showcasing real-life success stories of how students with asthma, families, and schools are working together to manage children's asthma at school. Several companion resources include a guide to facilitate a viewing of the video and e-mail and newsletter templates to publicize the screening event. - Science-based tools, resources, and guidance for making schools more asthma-friendly, including "Asthma Basics for Schools" customizable PowerPoint slide sets; and "Managing Asthma: A Guide for Schools" with reproducible handouts for teachers, coaches, school nurses, and other school staff.
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