Innovations in Home-Based Asthma Services Across the Country
by Anne Kelsey Lamb and Amanda Reddy
It’s Asthma and Allergy Awareness Month, and Regional Asthma Management & Prevention (RAMP) and the National Center for Healthy Housing are pleased to share our new resource, Sustainable Financing for Home-Based Asthma Services: Snapshots of Innovation and Progress Across the Country, available on RAMP’s site here and NCHH’s site here.
Sustainable Financing for Home-Based Asthma Services: Snapshots of Innovation and Progress Across the Country collects success stories from from California, Hawai’i, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, and Virginia.
Despite robust evidence about the impact of home-based services, asthma home visiting programs historically have had to rely on unstable grant funding to provide services. But in recent years, that pattern has begun to shift, and we have seen progress in communities and states across the country in building systems for sustainable asthma home visiting services.
While the current political and funding landscape may temporarily slow our collective progress, it’s a critical time to learn from others’ successes and do everything we can to maintain momentum across the country. The importance of documenting and sharing progress cannot be overstated.
As you’ll see from the report’s “snapshots,” building systems to expand and sustain access to home-based asthma services can take a long time, and there are many pathways for achieving similar outcomes. As such, progress can look different from one place to the next. This scan provides an overview of what progress and pathways might look like.
It features success stories from across the country, highlighting both state Medicaid policy advances, and stories about local partnerships, pilot programs, and other innovations that create a groundswell for statewide change; all serving as models for new community action. We hope that you will find this resource useful and inspiring. We are certainly inspired by the persistence and commitment of communities and states across the country working toward the shared goal of improving asthma outcomes.
Do you have a success story that’s not included in this resource? We’d love to work with you to make sure that your important work is documented, to inspire others and to provide a roadmap for those who may build on this work now or in the future. Reach out to us at RAMP or NCHH!.
Anne Kelsey Lamb, MPH, is the Director of RAMP. Serving as the director since 2002, Anne provides overall leadership in establishing RAMP’s vision and mission and ensuring success in achieving the goals and activities developed as part of our strategic plan. With a strong interest in both chronic illness and social inequities, she leads all components of the organization’s efforts to reduce the burden of asthma with a focus on equity including: building capacity of the field, creating linkages among stakeholders, and advocating for policy and systems change. Under Anne’s guidance and direction, RAMP has evolved as an organization, significantly expanding its breadth, scope, and impact, as well as acquiring funding from diverse foundations and agencies. Previously, Anne was a health educator at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, CA. Anne is a graduate of Bowdoin College and received a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Michigan.
Amanda Reddy, MS, Executive Director of the National Center for Healthy Housing, has advanced numerous initiatives, including those related to healthcare financing of healthy homes services, training and technical assistance to support the launch and growth of sustainable healthy homes programs, and the development of indicators for the HUD Healthy Communities Index. Prior to NCHH, Ms. Reddy was a research scientist with the New York State Department of Health, where she provided program evaluation, management, and technical support for the Asthma Control, Healthy Homes and Lead Poisoning Primary Prevention, Healthy Neighborhoods, and Healthy Home Environments for New Yorkers with Asthma programs. Ms. Reddy holds an MS in environmental health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a BA in neuroscience from Mount Holyoke College.