Fighting Asthma on Multiple Fronts

The division’s Asthma Program has been collaborating in an institution-wide initiative to improve asthma care for children across the entire CHOP Care Network. Each child with asthma is given a customized Asthma Care Plan, easily accessible to primary care physicians through CHOP’s electronic medical record system. Use of an Asthma Care Plan as a standard of care has improved from 60% to 90% since inception of the initiative.

Division members, along with staff from the divisions of Allergy/ Immunology, Emergency Medicine, and General Pediatrics, have written a book for parents of children with asthma, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Guide to Asthma, published by John Wiley and Sons.

The CHOP Asthma Initiative has led numerous asthma care improvement efforts, including the switch from nebulizers to metered dose inhalers, use of increased doses of inhaled corticosteroids as part of the Asthma Care Plan, appropriate dosage of inpatient glucocorticoids and continuous albuterol, and others.

Additional asthma research by the division includes investigating the role of pulmonary problems in patients with sickle cell disease and studying the basic mechanisms and molecular biology of allergic and asthma inflammation.