Asthma Cooperative Agreement Partner Profile – Vermont
The Vermont Asthma Program (VAP) has been part of CDC’s National Asthma Control Program since 2000. They work alongside partners to improve the quality of asthma care, improve asthma management in schools, and foster policies to help reduce exposure to asthma triggers in outdoor, indoor, and workplace environments. To improve equity to access and asthma management, strong collaborations exist between the state program and school nursing, environmental health, The Weatherization Program, health insurers, University of Vermont (UVM) Lung Center obesity and asthma researchers (including pharmacists), and several hospitals. VAP supports the advancement of indoor air quality through the Envision Program and provides funding to organizations that have expertise in medical delivery and asthma care, health promotion, and asthma-friendly school interventions.
Strategies in Action
- VAP funds the University of Vermont Medical Center (UVMMC) to deliver asthma self-management education (AS-ME) primarily to pediatric patients through its severe asthma clinic at the UVM Children’s Hospital. UVMMC’s AS-ME curriculum involves four 15- to 30-minute sessions, followed by two or more follow-up sessions to assess patients for sustained asthma control. Sessions address asthma basics, asthma medications including demonstrations of inhaler and spacer use, asthma triggers, and managing asthma. In collaboration with the UVM Children’s Hospital pediatric primary care team, VAP has launched a weekly meeting series that is ongoing to 7 weeks for all interested school nurses and healthcare providers who provide services to individuals with uncontrolled asthma, particularly children. The series is designed to equip providers to deliver AS-ME to students and patients.
- VAP collaborates with the VT Envision Program that was initiated in 2000 through a legislative act aimed at helping schools create and implement environmental health management plans and identify and address environmental health hazards. VT Envision supports schools in identifying, preventing, and problem-solving potential environmental health and indoor air quality issues through use of its Environmental Walkthrough tool. VAP promotes the Walkthrough tool and has made the Envision Walkthrough a top tiered best practice in VAP’s Asthma Friendly School Program.
- VAP and the Division of Environmental Health work together to support Informed Green Solutions (IGS), an organization dedicated to educating school personnel on the use of safer cleaning products to help reduce exposure to hazardous chemicals in schools, with emphasis on asthmagens. To date, IGS has presented trainings on safer cleaning and asthma-friendly disinfection protocols and policies to seven school stakeholders, including the Vermont Superintendents Association, the Vermont School Custodian and Maintenance Association, and the Vermont School Boards Insurance Trust. IGS also evaluates schools and reviews the actual products and practices being used on site. It delivers reports to participating schools with recommendations to reduce chemical hazards and choose safer products. To date, 73 schools have been trained and/or evaluated.
Asthma by the numbers:
In 2021, one in eight (12%) Vermont adults currently had asthma, statistically higher than the 10% of U.S. adults. 6% of VT adults with asthma visited the emergency room (ER) or urgent care in the past year to help manage their asthma.
In Vermont’s most recent (2020) data, a total of 7,845 Vermont children ages 0–17 years (7.3%) had asthma.
In recent years, 31% of children with asthma had activity limitations in the last month and nearly one in five children (18%) with asthma missed at least one day of school in the last 12 months.
In 2019, Vermont reported 1,764 emergency department (ED) visits and 189 hospitalizations due to asthma.
National Asthma Control Program: EXHALE
E
on asthma self-management
X
smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke
H
visits for trigger reduction and asthma self-management education
A
of guidelines-based medical management
L
and coordination of care across settings
E
policies or best practices to reduce asthma triggers from indoor, outdoor, or occupational sources
CDC’s National Asthma Control Program (NACP) and its partners help people with asthma achieve better health and improved quality of life. NACP developed EXHALE, a set of six public health strategies that each contribute to better asthma control.
Each EXHALE strategy has been proven to reduce asthma related hospitalizations, emergency department visits, and healthcare costs. Using the EXHALE strategies together in a community can have the greatest impact.
