Children’s Hospital Colorado, the University of Colorado School of Medicine at CU Anschutz Medical Campus, and CareDox today announced a new collaboration to scale the reach of the Hospital’s proven in-school asthma management program.
| NEW YORK, PRNewswire/ -- Children’s Hospital Colorado, the University of Colorado School of Medicine at CU Anschutz Medical Campus, and CareDox today announced a new collaboration to scale the reach of the Hospital’s proven in-school asthma management program. CareDox modeled this collaboration after the Hospital’s “Building Bridges for Asthma Care Program,” and is offering the new CareDox Asthma Care Management Program to the more than 7,100 K-12 schools where the company’s student health record platform and wellness services are already deployed. By combining proven clinical protocols with widely deployed technology and wellness services operations, the three organizations are poised to dramatically improve outcomes for pediatric asthmatics across the country.
Currently, approximately six million children under the age of 18 have asthma.1 It is the top reason for missed school, totalling nearly 14 million days each year. Socioeconomically disadvantaged children and minority children are disproportionately affected by asthma. In these two groups, asthma is more often left uncontrolled, leading not only to absenteeism, but also disrupted sleep, which negatively affects a child’s ability to learn and perform at school.2 “Children’s Hospital Colorado and CU School of Medicine providers created the Building Bridges for Asthma Care Program to address the risk of health disparities and asthma-related absenteeism, as well as its related impact on academic achievement for inner city students,” said Robin Deterding, MD, director of the Breathing Institute at Children’s Hospital Colorado, medical director of the Hospital’s Center for Innovation and professor of pulmonary medicine in the Department of Pediatrics at the CU School of Medicine. “Building Bridges has proven that a school-centered asthma management program can have a positive impact on pediatric health and ultimately reduce asthma-related absenteeism within a school’s population. Now by partnering with CareDox, we have the ability to drastically expand the program’s footprint and reduce asthma-related absenteeism on a massive scale.” The Building Bridges for Asthma Care Program commenced in 2012 and is now deployed in 28 public elementary schools in Denver, Colo. and Hartford, Conn. The school program in Colorado was developed by Stanley Szefler, MD, director of the Pediatric Asthma Research Program at Children’s Hospital Colorado and the CU School of Medicine. Throughout the school year, school nurses train their students on asthma management, inhaler technique and other clinical best practices, and the students’ absenteeism, physical activity and asthma control levels are monitored by nurses and communicated to their parents and healthcare providers. In a study of the impact of the program published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, participants in the program experienced a 22 percent decrease in school absenteeism.3 “Schools are ideal environments to address pediatric asthma, given that children spend a large proportion of their day at school and may interact with school nurses more frequently than any other health care provider,” said Hesky Kutscher, CEO of CareDox. “At the same time, school nurses are severely challenged by limited available time and resources to support the management of students with chronic diseases. So we’re taking our expertise in deploying large-scale technology-enabled school wellness programs and applying them to asthma on a national level.” Like CareDox’s existing school vaccination and annual wellness check programs, the CareDox Asthma Care Management Program will be offered to eligible students at no cost to the student, their parents or the school district. CareDox partners with public and private health insurance to support the program. The CareDox Asthma Care Management program is already in use in the Clay County District Schools in Florida, where there are more than 3,700 students who are known to have asthma. In addition to those students, CareDox leveraged medical data that resides on their student records platform to identify 345 additional students who are eligible for the program that weren’t already known to school nurses and health officials as asthmatic. In just three short months, CareDox has already implemented the proven Children’s Hospital Colorado/CU School of Medicine protocols to qualify 1,201 students with asthma into the CareDox Asthma Management Program, 349 of which are eligible for CareDox’s Expanded Care Program for severe uncontrolled asthma. The CareDox Expanded Care Asthma Management Program includes four key components to address uncontrolled asthma among student populations:
For more information on CareDox, please visit www.caredox.com. About CareDox About Children’s Hospital Colorado Media Contacts Elizabeth Whitehead, Children’s Hospital Colorado 1 Zahran, H., Bailey, C., Damon, S., Garbe, P. and Breysse, P. (2018). Vital Signs: Asthma in Children — United States, 2001–2016. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6705e1. [Accessed 16 Feb. 2018]
SOURCE CareDox |
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