Since the inception of the Kern County Asthma Coalition in 2001, it has been a coalition goal to help as many Kern County children as possible achieve asthma management through education. Asthma 101 is a part of the Kern County Asthma Coalition’s strategic focus on addressing asthma in schools. Asthma 101 is a curriculum that addresses proper control of asthma. The curriculum covers the physiology of the lungs, asthma triggers, medication, and emergency care. We have trained a little over 1000 teachers, teacher’s aides, administrative staff, faculty, parents’ students, daycare providers, nurses, community members, foster care agencies, collaboratives, and members of the Kern County Network for Children using the Asthma 101 program.
Providing asthma education in the schools has been an avenue to establish working relationships with school personnel. The curriculum was given to nurses, teachers, parents and school personnel throughout Bakersfield, Wasco, Arvin, Greenfield and Lamont school districts to name a few. The main focus of Asthma 101 is to create an awareness of asthma and how uncontrolled asthma can lead to school absenteeism, reduced participation in learning, which can then lead to poor test scores and even an inactive lifestyle.
Based on the outcomes of uncontrolled asthma, the coalition has had the opportunity to further expand their efforts to come up with a solution. To do this, the coalition participated in and obtained the help of other groups, such as the Regional Obesity Prevention Program of the Central California. Their main focus is to create healthy environments, healthy choices, healthy people, and healthy lifestyles through environmental and policy changes. In collaborating with other group to advocate for children in the community, we have made sure than when we are out in the public we let everyone know about how asthma can impact the overall quality of life for children. Most importantly, the air children breathe and the environment that they live in are vital in creating asthma friendly environments. This includes creating habitable and healthy communities.
The Air Quality Flag Program is our ticket to promoting air quality awareness. Schools, agencies, daycares and businesses have benefited from the program by receiving education on air quality. The program consists of distributing four flags - the flags come in green, indicating good air quality, yellow for moderate, orange for unhealthy to sensitive groups, and red for unhealthy for all groups. The Flag Program is free and we have recently finalized our smaller version of the program in a desktop model size of 8 ½ by 11 – this version is designed for daycares, businesses, and agencies that do not have flag poles. These models provide education and awareness to the community without the use of the flags, are both in English and Spanish, and provide the air quality index for each color. The desktop model has been a long awaited tool to spread air quality education at a smaller scale.
As an Asthma Coalition we believe our programs will raise asthma and air quality awareness and as a coalition we will continue our work in finding solutions to clean up our air and to provide asthma education to residents of Kern County.
For more information, please contact:
Dolores Vargas
Project Coordinator
(661) 847-4700
Dolores@kernlung.org |
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