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Scope of the Problem
Asthma is the most prevalent chronic disease among children and the leading cause of school absenteeism. In the Bay Area during 2005, 19.8% of school-aged children (ages 5-17) had been diagnosed with asthma at some point in their lives. In San Francisco during 2006, 530 children (ages 0-17) visited emergency rooms and 148 children (ages 0-17) were hospitalized with a primary diagnosis of asthma. Additionally 1,909 SF adults visited Emergency Rooms and 514 were hospitalized due to asthma in 2006. There were 31 deaths in the City due to asthma from 2003-2005, all of them adults.
Advocating for Solutions
The San Francisco Asthma Task Force believes that people deserve to live, work and play in healthy environments that do not cause or worsen asthma. Please link to the documents and videos below to see Asthma Task Force actions advocating for City agencies, health care providers and affected communities to reduce the impact of asthma.
- World Asthma Day May 2009 Awards (Word)
Activists Recognized for Countering Asthma Risks Posed by Traffic Emissions, Housing Conditions, and Home Cleaning Products - World Asthma Day May 2008 Policy Recommendations:
"Report to the Community on Asthma (pdf)" , and "Clinical Supplement (Word)"
Dates:
Grants:
The Regional Asthma Management and Prevention Initiative (RAMP) has awarded Breathe California Golden Gate Partnership and the Asthma Task Force a $29,995 grant entitled "Healthy Homes for All: Engaging Low-Income African American and Latino renters in San Francisco Bayview Hunters Point to Address Substandard Housing-Related Environmental Risk Factors for Asthma through community organizing" as part of RAMP's US Centers for Disease Control-funded "Center for Excellence in Eliminating Disparities" program. Task Force partners, the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco and Bay Area Legal Aid, will operate from the Alpha Omega Asthma Resource Center on Third Street in Bayview Hunters Point to meet with residents. They will identify housing conditions that adversely affect tenants with asthma, use housing rights law to improve individual housing conditions, while collecting data to document overall housing conditions in the Bayview Hunters Point community. This data will be used to train community leaders and organize community residents to advocate with both the City and the Housing Authority to eliminate unhealthy housing conditions.
Kaiser Permanente San Francisco has awarded the Asthma Resource Center of San Francisco, Inc. and the Asthma Task Force a $25,000 one-year grant for its "Making Patients Part of the Team" project , extending our current quality improvement work with safety net clinics, with an emphasis on improving patient-provider communication for asthma control. This is Kaiser Permanente's third Community Benefits award to the Task Force.
San Francisco Foundation awarded Breathe California Golden Gate Partnership and the Asthma Task Force a $20,000 grant for its one-year project to "Reduce the Overuse of Bleach in Childcare Settings", researching alternative methods and products that can help childcare operators reduce overuse of bleach while maintaining effective and required disinfection practices. Now that the grant is expiring, new funding is needed to maintain project staffing and activities benefitting local childcare providers.
Resources:
Listen to "Asthma Talk", now on KPOO Radio 89.5 FM, with host Rene Gonzalvez of the Alpha and Omega Asthma Resource Center B.V.H.P.
Teens: Check out a new section of the website for you-click here
Clinicians: Download 2-page summary of new EPR-3 Asthma Guidelines
Patients: New video to learn about the services of the SF General Hospital Pediatric Asthma Clinic (choose English, Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin or Vietnamese)
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