Participate in Asthma Awareness Month!
Each May, thousands of organizations across the U.S. join together for Asthma Awareness Month (AAM) in an effort to increase public awareness about the nation’s asthma epidemic and to take action to get asthma under control in communities nationwide. Asthma affects almost 25 million people of all ages and races in the U.S.; however, public awareness of common asthma triggers and effective asthma management strategies remains limited. Scroll down to learn how you can promote your program's Asthma Awareness Month activities on AsthmaCommunityNetwork.org.
Browse AAM Events
Check out the Events Calendar and use the widget on the right hand side of the page to search for AAM events in your community!
Join the national effort in promoting Asthma Awareness. Put this widget on your Web page. Click here for the code!
Identify Partners in Your Community
Search the Community Program Profiles on AsthmaCommunityNetwork.org to find programs in your area to partner with and host events. Promote your events by posting them on the Events Calendar!
Find and Share Resources
Search the Resource Bank to inform your program’s work. The Resource Bank has everything from checklists and asthma action plans to education and outreach materials and community health worker tools.
To search for what you need, use the advanced search feature:
- Visit the Resource Bank.
- Click on the “show advanced search” button.
- Check the boxes under “Resource Category,” “Resource Type,” “Language,” “Literacy Level,” and “Target Audience” based on your resource needs.
- Click the “search” button at the bottom of the page.
- To start a new search, click the “start new search button.”
To share your program’s resources:
- Visit the Resource Bank.
- In the green box on the page, click the "add your resource" button.
- Complete the fields and upload your resource.
- Make sure to click the "save" button at the bottom of the page to add your resource.
- To add another resource, simply repeat steps 1-4 above.
Check out these Top Five Resources:
- Guide to Asthma Policy for Housing and Schools
American Lung Association - School Flag Program
EPA Asthma Team - Asthma Clinical Guidelines Flip Chart
AH! Asthma Health - Asthma Triggers Coloring Book
EPA Region 4 - Environmental Improvements for Children’s Asthma: The Impact on Symptom Burden and Return on Investment of a Home-Based Environmental Assessment and Modification Project
American Lung Association of Minnesota
Plan AAM Events
Download EPA’s Asthma Awareness Month Event Planning Kit, which features new ideas for outreach and awareness activities, tips for working with the media, success stories and much more.
Add AAM Events
Publicize your community’s AAM Event on the AsthmaCommunityNetwork.org Events Calendar. Make sure to designate it as an "Asthma Awareness Month" event so others can easily recognize that your event is part of this national effort.
Have Multiple Events?
Add each event separately to maximize your marketing impact. You’ll also be able to track how many people RSVP for each event.
Read and Share AAM Stories
After your event takes place, let other AsthmaCommunityNetwork.org members know how it went by writing a blog post. This is a quick, easy way to share your successes with the community. You can even upload pictures from your events! Your stories can also help others in planning their own successful events.
View Popular Videos, Podcasts and Webinars
Check out the Multimedia page to view videos and podcasts, and the Webinars page to watch popular webinars on a variety of asthma management topics.
Sustaining The System
Strategy 1 - Use Data to Demonstrate Your Program’s Value
Put data that matters to potential funders and payers in front of them to demonstrate the need for your program and your impact
When IMPACT DC’s directors present to funders, they use quantitative data that describes the need, emphasizing the City’s disproportionate asthma burden (10.3% of children aged 0-17 years in DC have asthma); and qualitative data that follows one child through the program to demonstrate the health and QOL improvements the program delivers.
ANWM visits corporations and describes the burden of asthma in terms that are relevant to employers. There are many children with severe asthma in the community and when they suffer acute attacks, their parents—the corporation’s employees—are more likely to miss work.
Strategy 2 - Be Visible: Funders Support What They Know
Publicize your program’s activities and results as broadly as possible
ANWM once received an unsolicited $30,000 grant because its leaders always made time to speak publicly about the program’s results. The program manager regularly appears at local health fairs, community events, United Way meetings, etc. When a newly formed investors’ circle was looking to support a significant social issue through an organization with demonstrated results, ANWM was the obvious choice.
Strategy 3 - Make it Easy to Support Your Program
Identify discrete program elements and their costs so that funders and payers can support individual elements if they are not ready to support the program in its entirety
After meeting with limited success in their attempts to sell their asthma program to payers in the Kansas City area, CMFHP established a model that allows it to sell pieces of its program to outside insurers (i.e., payers other than Family Health Partners). For example, plans can buy the disease management training component without the social worker support for high utilizers, or consulting services for help replicating CMFHP’s program.
Strategy 4 - Promote Institutional Change for Sustainability
Embed your asthma management program in your organization
CHA built their Planned Care Program “not by creating new jobs, but by showing the staff [they] already had how to do their jobs better.” CHA redesigned their workflows and developed the resources and systems, such as an electronic registry, to make it easy for staff to deliver the quality of care the program was designed to achieve.