Let's Get Moving! Exercise is Fun!

Chad Fenwick, Los Angeles Unified School District led the group on some fun exercises.

Collaboration and Policy: Building Blocks to Sustain IAQ/Asthma Programs

Joan Edelstein, MSN, DrPH, RN, brought her extensive experience as a clinician and educator in maternal/child health to the full-group afternoon session.   The first part of the session Joan lectured on asthma management.  She cited a quote from School Governance and Leadership, Spring 2003  “A school’s best protection against liability is having policies and procedures in place and being proactive.”   

The main course of instruction then became interactive.  She asked the teams to discuss their asthma policies.  By the end of the presentation, she said participants would be able to:

• Develop at least two strategies to sustain their asthma programs beyond the cooperative agreement cycle
• Describe at least two ways to work with school boards to implement policy on IAQ/Asthma
• Discuss the impact of district asthma policy on district liability
• List components to be added to adapt an IAQ/Asthma policy for their local school district

Building Support and Capacity at the State and Local Level

Lorene Alba of the American Association of School Administrators led one of the three morning breakout sessions using a checklist for school districts addressing the needs of students with asthma.  Her main question to the groups of three is "Who is making your ask?" Using interactive exercises, she empowered each group to come to their own conclusion using a facilitated process of discovery.

Each of the three groups came up with their own response to the "ask" question.  One group said it was critical to identify the person who we need to approach for approval and ask "what's in it for them?"  Their example was to promote an Asthma Educational Plan requiring four sessions at 35 minutes a piece.  Their "ask" was to pull the kids out of class 15 minutes before and 10 minutes after.  The reward for the principal?  The astma team does all the work, a win-win situation.  The result? A 20 percent reduction in absenteeism related to asthma.  Lorene told the team "If you are told no, then you didn't ask the right question."

Programs and Policy: Linking Asthma Outcomes to Policy and Building Support

Maureen Damitz and Joel J. Africk of Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago have been heavily involved in delivery of asthma self-management education to school children in Chicago using "Fight Asthma Now" an evidence-based, age appropriate program.  The duo led participants in one of the three morning breakout sessions. 

The attendees were broken down into four groups and each tackled issues related to: problem identification; development of success strategy; and identifying key stakeholders.  One group identified their issue as an introduction to using "green" cleaning products and integrated pest management to improve indoor air quality.  Joel gave the groups some advice related to numerical calculations.  "Underestimate the true number of the affected population.  If it's 300,000, tell them it's 200,000, that way they can't come back to you and say you were inflating your numbers.  Also, think of your case as a selling document."

We're In This Together--Engaging Parents and Families of Students With Asthma

Barbara Flis, Parent Action for Healthy Kids began her career as a presenter by being a volunteer in her children's classroom.  They are now 26 and 30.  "Lower your expectations of parents," she said. "The perfect parent? It's an illusion."  Her three-hour interactive presentation We're In This Together was a series of exercises meant to help asthma-related staff engage with parents and school district officials in a more compassionate and empowering manner. 

Her session's agenda for the morning:

• Re-framing our perceptions of parents
• Breaking down the barriers
• Tools and resources for authentic engagement
• Creating a plan and designing a program

Day Two -- Event Highlights

Holly Alperin, our event coordinator welcomed everyone to Day Two of Strengthening Our Practice: Building Asthma-Friendly Schools. She tells participants by the end of the day they will have:

--Learned skills related to parent/family engagement policy development, and/or engaging stakeholders to advance programmatic efforts

--Increased understanding of and strategies for implementing Indoor Air Quality (AIQ) related efforts and adding IAQ items to school district policy

New York City: Bump It Up!

"How do we help each Family Assistant understand that he/she plays a vital role in the life of a student living with asthma and residing in transitional housing?” This is the question that Jenelle Rose of the New York City Department of Education posed to the group. There are over 35,000 people living in New York City shelters, of those people, 8,213 are families with children, a staggering number of these cases relate to asthma. The liaisons to these families are the Family Assistants (FA) who reaches out to the parent/guardian of the children. They empathize with the family’s living condition, and understand the importance of the children in that demographic, staying in school.

The intake form or questionnaire right now is administered by the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) and the Department of Homeless (DOH). While the Family Assistants (FAs) were trained to complete the health questionnaires, there is inconsistent data being reported. The difference between the two questions: “does your child have asthma?” and “does your child wheeze at night?” results in irregular data, which becomes problematic for empirical research. Jenelle asked the group for suggestions on ways to align the data resulting in more meaningful outcomes. The group suggestions include:

• Agree that the first step is to form a common question to be asked from both groups
• Gather both DHS & DOA FAs together for a meeting and provide an in-service for each group
• Merge the surveys into one and make them both electronic
• Provide FAs training on ACT test and let them know how much bad data can cost the community
• Instruct FAs to inform the parents/guardians where the free clinics are located to enroll in Medicaid