Background

Tyra Bryant-Stephens, is a board-certified pediatrician in clinical primary care practice for over 30 years and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In 1997 she founded the Community Asthma Prevention Program (CAPP) of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), an asthma program that utilizes community health workers to implement asthma interventions in underserved, poorly-resourced inner-city communities. As Medical Director of the program, she leads a core staff that includes public health professionals, nurse coordinator, research coordinators and community health workers.

Dr. Bryant-Stephens is nationally recognized for her work in community-driven, evidence-based research in asthma interventions.  Over the past 23 years she has led a number of projects to improve asthma management through community-based interventions. These projects received funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Institutes of Health (NIH), US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Pennsylvania Department of Health, Merck Childhood Asthma Network and other foundations.

CAPP has made over 21,000 home-based asthma visits, educated thousands of caregivers in community education classes, provided site-based asthma trainings for hundreds of primary care providers and taught hundreds of children in school-based asthma classes. Recently Dr. Bryant-Stephens has partnered with home repair agencies to create the CAPP+ program where structural home repairs are carried out to eliminate root causes of asthma triggers including roof repairs, wall repairs, plumbing repairs and pest extrusion procedures. She leads a partnership of interdisciplinary stakeholders including public health professionals, community agencies, parents, clinicians, educators and researchers, the CAPP Collaborative, who are invested in improving lives for children with asthma and convenes an annual conference, The Fighting Asthma Disparities Summit, attended by local, state and national stakeholders. In 2015, her work was recognized by the White House and she was invited to participate in a roundtable discussion with President Obama, the Surgeon General and EPA Administrator to discuss strategies to engage the community in the health impacts of climate change.

Dr. Bryant-Stephens was a founding member of the Philadelphia Coalition of Black Pediatricians and Pennsylvania Asthma Partnership. She is a past member of the US EPA Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee. Most recently she served as a member of the Expert Panel Working Group of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute which released the  2020 Focused Updates to the Asthma Management Guidelines. She coordinates asthma care education annually for more than 70 primary care physicians in the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Care Network, which serves approximately 50,000 inner-city patients and conducts over 100,000 patient visits each year. She serves on regional and national advisory committees and locally serves as a member of the Philadelphia Board of Health, the Racial Equity Committee for COVID-19 testing and the COVID-19 Vaccine Advisory Committee.

Dr. Bryant-Stephens has been married to her college sweetheart, Dr. Paul Stephens Jr, for almost forty years and is the proud mother of two amazing daughters and grandmother of three adorable children.

Education and Training

Medical School

MD - Bowman Gray School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC

Residency

Pediatrics - Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, GA

Board Certification

Pediatrics – American Board of Pediatrics

Titles and Academic Titles

Director, Community Asthma Prevention Program

Attending Physician

Chief Health Equity Officer, Center for Health Equity

Departments and Services

Publications

Papers

Bryant-Stephens T, Kurian C, Chen Z. Brief report of a low-cost street-corner methodology used to assess inner-city residents' awareness and knowledge about asthma. J Urban Health. 2011 Feb;88 Suppl 1:156-63. No abstract available.

Herman EJ, Keller A, Davis A, Ehrensberger R, Telleen S, Kurz R, Nesvold JH, Findley S, Bryant-Stephens T, Benson M, Fierro L. A model-driven approach to qualitatively assessing the added value of community coalitions. J Urban Health. 2011 Feb;88 Suppl 1:130-43.

Bryant-Stephens T, Kurian C, Guo R, Zhao H. Impact of a household environmental intervention delivered by lay health workers on asthma symptom control in urban, disadvantaged children with asthma. Am J Public Health. 2009 Nov;99 Suppl 3:S657-65.

Bell LM, Grundmeier R, Localio R, Zorc J, Fiks AG, Zhang X, Stephens TB, Swietlik M, Guevara JP. Electronic health record-based decision support to improve asthma care: a cluster-randomized trial. Pediatrics. 2010 Apr;125(4):e770-7. Epub 2010 Mar 15.

Abstracts

Bryant-Stephens T, Li Y. Randomized control trial to reduce indoor environmental allergens in asthmatic children's bedroom. Annual American College of Asthma, Allergy and Immunology Conference, November 2002.

Books

Allen J, Bryant-Stephens T, Pawlowski N. Your Child With Asthma, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's Parent Guide. March 2004.