Asthma Awareness Month: EXHALE Strategies
Date: 04/25/22
May is Asthma Awareness Month. To commemorate this month, we are reminding providers to keep Superior HealthPlan members up to date on asthma education and promote awareness about how this serious, sometimes life-threatening, chronic respiratory disease can be controlled.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Asthma Control Program (NACP), and its partners, help members with asthma achieve better health and improve their quality of life. The NACP developed EXHALE, a set of six strategies that contribute to better asthma control, which can help people with asthma.
The EXHALE strategies have been proven to reduce asthma-related hospitalizations, emergency department visits and healthcare costs. Using these strategies together in a community can have the greatest impact. EXHALE strategies include:
- Education on asthma self-management.
- X-tinguishing smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke.
- Home visits for trigger reduction and asthma self-management education.
- Achievement of guidelines-based medical management.
- Linkages and coordination of care across settings.
- Environmental policies or best practices to reduce asthma triggers from indoor, outdoor, or occupational sources.
Healthcare professionals have the power to improve the health of people with asthma by providing:
- High-quality care.
- Asthma self-management education.
- Referrals to available support services.
To further explain how to use EXHALE strategies to help people with asthma achieve better health outcomes, the CDC and NACP have created the EXHALE Guide for Healthcare Professionals.
For additional details on how healthcare professionals can play an important role in improving the health of people with asthma, please visit NACP’s EXHALE webpage.
To find asthma resources for members, please visit Superior’s Member Asthma Help webpage.