Free Breather Hawaii

Projects

Childhood Rural Asthma Project

The Childhood Rural Asthma Project was initiated in August 2002, to focus on improving the health, quality of life and functional status of Hawai’i's low-income children in rural areas. The project is managed by the Hawai’i State Department of Health's Community Health Division and administered by the Hawai’i Primary Care Association. The project builds upon the capacity of six rural community health centers to effectively identify, treat, and educate pediatric asthma sufferers and their caregivers/families on the islands of Oahu, Kauai, and Hawai’i.

The Childhood Rural Asthma Project has:

  • Expanded asthma outreach and early identification of children with asthma to additional sites in schools, early-childhood education programs, and community based sites;
  • Built upon staff expertise acquired through follow-up training in current state-of-the-art pediatric asthma guidelines and practices;
  • Created and strengthened systems focused on identifying, referring, educating, treating, and providing case management services for asthma patients at all sites; and
  • Provided the infrastructure for sustainable programs through the incorporation of best practices into clinical operations and the redesign of delivery systems for better outcomes.

Objective #1: Improve health outcomes among 25 children (per site) with mild to severe asthma.

Objective #2: Expand training in current evidenced-based guidelines and effective strategies for the treatment of pediatric asthma at rural community health centers.

Objective #3: Expand services for pediatric asthma identification, screening, referral and treatment to additional populations after strengthening their efforts within the clinic.

Objective #4: Strengthen or change the system of care to improve the quality of pediatric asthma referral, treatment, and education by implementing lessons learned through the Bureau of Primary Health Care’s (BPHC) Health Disparities Collaborative (HDC).

The Childhood Rural Asthma Project Sites: