BUFFALO, N.Y. — Congressman Brian Higgins (D-NY-26) announced a $684,000 grant to support school-based asthma care.
The grant was awarded to the University at Buffalo through the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.
The grant is intended to help UB's project ASTHMA (Aligning with Schools to Help Manage Asthma and Decrease Health Inequities).
“Building a stronger and healthier future for kids and families in Western New York begins with reducing barriers to basic needs like healthcare,” said Congressman Higgins. “Asthma often has the greatest impact on the most vulnerable children in our community, with symptoms that require emergency medical care and prevent them from attending school. Thanks to federal funding from the National Institutes of Health, the University of Buffalo is using a school-based approach to asthma care in Buffalo, ensuring this chronic disease will not prevent students from being in the classroom each day.”
Asthma is the most common chronic disease among children in Buffalo. It is a disease that is typically more common in economically disadvantaged communities where those individuals are 10-15 times more likely to have an attack. Attacks result in emergency room visits which can be a big expense and happens more often to those in poverty than for those more so than kids in the suburbs.
The project uses a multi-component intervention study that uses school-based health centers to give up-to-date asthma care for children ages 4 to 13-years-old who experience frequent attack living below the poverty line.
“With over 2,500 school-based health centers across the United States, they are a potentially cost-effective method to improve the health of children with chronic diseases living in poor communities,” said Lucy Holmes, MD, MPH, clinical associate professor of pediatrics at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo and the study’s lead researcher.
To learn more visit medicine.buffalo.edu
