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What is asthma?
Asthma in St. Louis
What is asthma?
- Asthma is a chronic lung disease that affects both children and adults of all ages.
- Asthma is caused by inflammation within the lungs. This can lead to muscle tightening around the airways that that can make it hard to breathe.
- Even though asthma can be a serious disease, people manage it with inhalers and other medications recommended by their healthcare provider.
What are the symptoms?
The symptoms of asthma are different for each person. However, common symptoms of asthma include shortness of breath, coughing, wheezing, and chest tightness.
- Generally, the symptoms of asthma vary over time. Sometimes asthma will get dramatically worse for patients over a short time period and they can experience an asthma attack, or an asthma exacerbation.
- Asthma can be serious and asthma attacks can lead to hospitalizations or even death.
- Regular use of asthma medications generally makes asthma symptoms better and decreases the risks of asthma.
How common is asthma?
Asthma is extremely common throughout the world.
- Asthma affects people from all communities and of all ages. Often, but not always, people are first diagnosed with asthma in childhood.
- Asthma is the number one reason children miss school because of a chronic illness.
- Asthma causes 14.8 million missed workdays.
Asthma by the numbers
26 million Americans are diagnosed with asthma.
1 in 10 children are diagnosed with asthma.
$80 billion U.S. dollars in cost annually.
13.8 million missed school days per year.
How can asthma be treated?
- Asthma is generally quite treatable with inhalers and other asthma medications.
- The treatment of asthma depends on how often you experience symptoms and your age amongst other factors. The goal of doctors is to limit asthma symptoms and the occurrence of asthma exacerbations or flares that can be serious.
- A new treatment called “SMART Therapy” for asthma is recommended by asthma experts and guidelines.
Asthma in St. Louis
Asthma’s impact on St. Louis, MO
- St. Louis has one of the highest asthma rates in the United States, and has been termed an “Asthma capital” by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
- At St. Louis Children’s Hospital, asthma is one of the most common reasons for emergency room visits and the number one reason for patient admissions.
- According to one report, childhood asthma is St. Louis’ top healthcare inequity with asthma exacerbations leading to frequent ER visits and hospital admissions.
- In St. Louis city, Black children are 10x more likely than white children to visit emergency rooms for asthma.
- Asthma burdens are unevenly distributed, with non-white populations and lower socioeconomic households disproportionately affected.
Improving asthma care in St. Louis, MO
- The CHEST Study is a partnership between Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine pulmonary providers and community health centers.
- CHEST aims to increase SMART use in local clinics using implementation science. CHEST includes:
- Clinician education on SMART
- Frequent visits between Washington University pulmonology and community health centers
- Patient-centered SMART education and updated Asthma Action Plans
- CHEST is advised by a Stakeholder Advisory Group that includes asthma patients, public health leaders, community health providers, and academic providers.
