NACI Strategic Partnership Program

Meaningful partnerships can transform the lives of people with asthma.

In December 2008, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) convened the National Asthma Education and Prevention Program (NAEPP) Coordinating Committee and other interested stakeholders to announce the National Asthma Control Initiative (NACI). At that meeting, the NHLBI invited interested organizations to commit to working with the NACI to forge strategic partnership activities that would advance the recommendations of the NAEPP’s Expert Panel Report 3—Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Asthma (EPR-3) and its companion Guidelines Implementation Panel Report (GIP)—Partners Putting Guidelines Into Action.

A number of leading nonprofit, scientific, professional, academic, government, and voluntary organizations responded to the NHLBI’s call to become NACI Strategic Partners. The NACI Strategic Partnership Program focuses on establishing a shared vision among these key stakeholder organizations to align their resources with those of the NACI to implement interventions targeting the six GIP messages that will have sustained impact on improving asthma control in the United States. Moreover, these organizations will extend the NACI’s reach by sharing information and tools with their members, constituents, and priority populations and with other NACI programs and stakeholders through the NACI’s national communications infrastructure.

Program Descriptions

Allergy & Asthma Network Mothers of Asthmatics (Fairfax, VA)

The Allergy & Asthma Network Mothers of Asthmatics (AANMA) piloted the Great American Asthma Challenge (GAAC)©: Real Strategies for Living and Breathing the NIH Guidelines, a self-paced program to educate individuals with asthma and their families on how to incorporate the key GIP messages into their daily asthma management practices through culturally compatible and results-oriented guidance, structure, and problem-solving tools. To engage families in the GAAC, AANMA’s volunteer Outreach Service Coordinators, backed by AANMA’s Patient Support Center, conducted informational meetings and other recruitment strategies in collaboration with local health care and social service providers and community and faith-based organizations in urban neighborhoods in Baltimore, MD, Chicago, IL, and Richmond, VA. [Full Profile]

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American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (Milwaukee, WI)

The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI) teamed up with the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) National Research Network to adapt AAAAI’s Web-based “Asthma Specialist Tool to Help Manage Asthma and Improve Quality” (ASTHMA IQ) for primary care use. The resulting ASTHMA IQ for Primary Care Physicians is a HIPAA-compliant clinical decision support tool that helps clinicians learn about and integrate the EPR-3 guidelines and the six priority GIP messages into their busy practices. Moreover, it allows users to collect, review, graph, and report performance and quality improvement measures to enhance the quality of care they deliver to their patients with asthma. [Full Profile]

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American Board of Family Medicine, Inc. (Lexington, KY)

The American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM), as part of its continuous maintenance of certification (MOC) process, used trained faculty to guide small groups of family physicians through an asthma self-assessment module (SAM) updated with the six priority GIP messages. The ABFM compared changes in knowledge and clinical practice between physicians in the group asthma SAM and their counterparts that completed the asthma SAM through the standard online MOC process. The ABFM worked with several state chapters of the American Academy of Family Physicians to extend the group SAM, successfully piloted in Virginia, to additional physicians in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Virginia. [Full Profile]

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American School Health Association (Bethesda, MD)

The American School Health Association (ASHA) aimed to create more asthma-friendly schools across the country by promoting an online continuing education training on asthma management for school nurses, physical educators, coaches, athletic trainers, and school health coordinators. ASHA energized these asthma champions by presenting face-to-face trainings at its annual meetings and by hosting a Web-based booster session to reinforce key EPR-3 and GIP messages presented in the online and face-to-face sessions. Through these trainings, ASHA aimed to increase the number of school-based personnel who can assist students with asthma to manage their disease and who are able to identify quickly, and to respond appropriately to, asthma episodes in schools. [Full Profile]

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Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America

The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA) incorporated the NAEPP's six priority GIP messages into its Asthma Management and Education (AME) program, designed to educate nurses, respiratory therapists, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and other health professionals on the current NAEPP guidelines and strategies for educating patients on asthma self-management. AAFA also published several newsletter articles with tips to encourage patients, family members, and other caregivers to partner with their health care provider to put these messages into action to control asthma. In addition, AAFA worked collaboratively with the NAEPP to include its Student Asthma Action Card among several sample asthma action plans in the NHLBI's updated Asthma and Physical Activity in the School. [Full Profile]

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National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners (Cherry Hill, NJ)

The National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners (NAPNAP) established a Pediatric Asthma Education (PAE) Train-the-Trainer Program to strengthen the abilities of primary care providers to improve the health outcomes of children with asthma. In a two-day conference, NAPNAP trained at least 50 national pediatric asthma trainers (NPATs) from across the country, with special emphasis on recruiting trainers from medically underserved areas and areas with high asthma prevalence. The curriculum, created with pediatric asthma experts from NAPNAP and other professional organizations, focused on the six priority GIP messages and included strategies for rural, school, and adolescent populations and various cultures. Upon their return home, NPATs used the PAE modules to train additional pediatric health care professionals. [Full Profile]

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National Asthma Campaign Foundation (Parsippany, NJ)

To ensure that clinicians, patients, and caregivers have the knowledge and the skills necessary to control asthma, the National Asthma Campaign Foundation (NAC) developed a series of online education interventions to promote awareness and understanding of GIP priority messages. Each continuing education module for health care professionals was matched with a patient module. NAC’s dual approach helped strengthen the partnership between health care physicians and patients by providing them with consistent messages and by encouraging a dialogue between them. The NACI disseminated and promoted these modules through its Web site and through other stakeholder organizations and health communication channels. [Full Profile]

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National Environmental Education Foundation (Washington, DC)

The National Environmental Education Foundation’s (NEEF) Pediatric Asthma Initiative aimed to integrate comprehensive asthma management into pediatric health care in a sustainable manner. NEEF is expanded the reach of its Initiative to increase the number of health care professionals who are successfully integrating the six priority GIP messages into the care of their asthma patients, with special attention given to environmental management. NEEF utilized its network of Pediatric Asthma Faculty Champions across the country to train faculty, medical students, residents, and clinicians. NEEF adapted its program content and tools to include the priority GIP messages and created additional tools to further promote the GIP messages to health care providers. [Full Profile]

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National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Washington, DC and Atlanta, GA)

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is a federal agency within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that was established to help ensure safe and healthful working conditions for working men and women. NIOSH and the NHLBI committed to working together to identify collaborative opportunities to promote the GIP priority messages to clinicians, patients, and employers with a focus on the environmental message. Together, they worked on ways to encourage clinicians to include occupational and other environmental exposures when obtaining a comprehensive health history and to use spriometry (lung function testing) in the diagnosis and monitoring of asthma. Both activities are key quality indicators for asthma care. NIOSH and the NHLBI also explored opportunities to enhance state-of-the-art spirometry training programs and to extend these programs to primary care physicians and other appropriate health disciplines.

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National Medical Association (Washington, DC)

The National Medical Association (NMA) is expanding its education and outreach efforts through its Asthma and Allergy Rescue Project to reduce asthma disparities by enhancing the delivery of quality asthma care in African-American communities. The project will develop and test a training program for physicians that integrates the GIP priority messages with culturally competent approaches to patient education that will improve asthma self-management behaviors. To facilitate putting the training into practice, the NMA will provide toolkits for physicians and for patients with educational materials and other useful resources that reinforce the GIP messages. The NMA will pilot the training program at its regional meetings, at its annual convention, and in the cities of Washington, DC, and Detroit, MI. [Full Profile]

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University of Michigan Center for Managing Chronic Disease (Ann Arbor, MI)

The University of Michigan Center for Managing Chronic Disease (CMCD) integrated GIP messages throughout the Physician Asthma Care Education (PACE) Program. PACE is a multifaceted seminar developed by physicians and public health professionals at the University of Michigan and Columbia University. In multiple trials, PACE improved long-term asthma outcomes, even though PACE-trained physicians spent no more time with their patients than other physicians. CMCD developed additional materials and a PACE webinar to enable clinicians, particularly those who practice in high-risk communities, to serve as PACE trainers. [Full Profile]

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University of Washington (Seattle, WA)

Following an online outreach effort to raise awareness among health care providers on using spirometry (lung function testing) as recommended by the EPR-3 guidelines for the diagnosis, assessment, and monitoring of asthma, the University of Washington (UW) delivered its Spirometry 360 training and feedback program throughout the United States to clinicians and other staff at 30 primary care safety net practices that serve vulnerable populations. Spirometry 360 was an evidence-based program that combined the power of in-person quality improvement methods with the advantages of distance training by using a computer-based, self-paced tutorial; interactive case-based teaching led by expert clinical faculty; and customized feedback reports from clinical experts summarizing the quality of spirometry performed in the participating clinics. By furthering the effective application of well-performed spirometry technology in the primary care setting, the UW facilitated the use of priority GIP messages to improve asthma control within high-risk groups. [Full Profile]

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