- Of the more than 20 million people in the U.S. who suffer from asthma and allergic asthma, nearly two million end up in the emergency room each year. What’s even more troublesome is poor asthma control is much more prevalent than it should be, and a key problem is ineffective communication between patients and their healthcare providers (HCPs). Patients and HCPs have different understandings of asthma control and are simply not using the same words when talking about control. To address this problem, Chandler Chicco Agency, working with the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA), launched Better Control for Better Living (BCBL), a multi-disciplinary educational panel of leading asthma HCPs and patient advocates to promote good control of asthma through communication. The result was the development of a number of practical recommendations for improvement, specifically the Sleep/Work/Play™ (Sleep/Learn/Play™ for adolescents) communications framework for discussing asthma control. In other words, if any part of a patient’s sleep, work, or play is affected, then his/her asthma is not under control. To improve patient-HCP communication and achieve better asthma control, CCA and Dr. Paul Ehrlich, BCBL panel co-chair and clinical assistant professor and allergist, New York University School of Medicine and attending at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City, created a clinically relevant white paper based on the panel meeting. The white paper included an analysis of asthma management and education and the Sleep/Work/Play call-to-action. The white paper, “Improving Asthma Control: Talk Is Not Cheap,” was published after just four months of development as a ‘Special Report’ in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunology, arguably the most prestigious national asthma and allergy peer-reviewed journal. Annals has a circulation of 5,300 and is published monthly by the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology. To support the publication of the Annals article and further capitalize on the spring asthma and allergy season, CCA launched the Sleep/Work/Play campaign with a survey of asthma sufferers and caregivers and a media blitz. To date, media outreach for the Sleep/Work/Play campaign has generated over 21,423,712 impressions in notable media outlets such as USA Today, Forth Worth Star Telegram, NY, Radio America and CNN Radio.
