Asthma Control in Tribal Communities Initiative Marks 2-Years of Best Practices
May is designated as Asthma Awareness Month in the United States. This month is a time for raising awareness about asthma and to empower individuals, families, and the community to improve the lives of those affected by this condition.
In April 2023, I announced the IHS National Asthma Control in Tribal communities (ACT) Initiative. As a part of our IHS contemporary strategic initiatives program, ACT continues to be an essential component of the agency’s efforts to reduce the adverse impacts of chronic disease across the age spectrum, especially in children and adolescents.
As a reminder, American Indian and Alaska Native people suffer a higher prevalence of asthma than any other specific racial or ethnic group. Chronic asthma can reduce quality of life and lead to serious illness and even death. Mitigating the risk of asthma and asthma-related complications in Indian Country requires a proactive, multidisciplinary approach. This involves engaging the expertise of clinical, public health, and environmental health staff in a comprehensive strategy that includes awareness, education, prevention, screening, early diagnosis, and optimized care management to improve asthma-related health outcomes for individuals and tribal communities.
I am pleased to report that over the past two years since the implementation of the IHS National ACT Initiative, seventeen (17) federal, tribal, and urban Indian organization individuals and teams have been designated as IHS ACT Ambassadors in nine IHS Areas, including clinical, public health, and environmental health practitioners. These pilot sites have already developed and shared a broad range of best practices that we have disseminated to cross-pollinate our IHS system of care. The ACT Ambassadors Pilot program is actively recruiting new I/T/U sites, and I encourage more sites to apply. In recent months, we rolled out our ACT Ambassador Pilot Community Development project, which is designed to support collaboration between pilot sites and other programs seeking to improve asthma-related care.
For details about the IHS National Asthma Control in Tribal communities (ACT) Initiative, I invite you to visit our IHS Strategic Initiatives webpage, hosted by the IHS National Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee (NPTC). On the webpage, you will find more information about the ACT Initiative, the ACT Ambassadors Pilot Program, and the Pilot Community Development Project, as well as ACT best practices and other valuable resources for providers, patients, and the tribal communities whom we are privileged to serve.
As we renew our commitment to mitigating the impacts of asthma in Indian Country, I am confident that we can strengthen our prevention efforts and support improved quality of life and health outcomes for our vulnerable service population.
