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Asthma

Inside the Science of Pediatric Lung Disease: A Special Section
 Inside the Science of Pediatric Lung Disease: A Special Section 1024 624 Abbie Miller
By: Abbie Miller
colorful water color style illustration of lungs

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR Our breath connects us with the moment, grounds us and has the power to calm our minds and bodies. But for millions of children, an easy breath is not guaranteed. Lung disease accounts for about a third of admissions to children’s hospitals. From the common culprits, such as asthma, to…

Decoding Pediatric Asthma: From Cells to Care
 Decoding Pediatric Asthma: From Cells to Care 1024 448 Madison Storm
By: Madison Storm
simple cartoon illustration of lungs

How clinician-scientist teams are mapping the molecular drivers of wheezing and asthma to guide smarter, faster and more personalized treatment. Asthma is one of the most common reasons children visit the Emergency Department (ED) at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. While frontline clinicians work quickly to stabilize breathing, researchers across the hospital are probing deeper: What’s happening…

Better Asthma Outcomes: A Systems-Level Approach
 Better Asthma Outcomes: A Systems-Level Approach 1024 422 Katie Brind'Amour, PhD, MS, CHES
By: Katie Brind'Amour, PhD, MS, CHES
Smiling child wearing a blue bike helmet and vest while riding outdoors on a sunny day, promoting bicycle safety and healthy outdoor activities for kids.

A dedicated team of experts embraced sweeping tactics to reduce asthma-related emergency department visits by 33% and inpatient length of stay by 0.9 days. This is how they did it. It started with a conversation about the data: Why are kids with asthma the hospital’s most frequent fliers? After all, excellent preventive and acute treatments…

Shedding Light on Immune Responses in Children With Acute Asthma Exacerbations
 Shedding Light on Immune Responses in Children With Acute Asthma Exacerbations 969 533 JoAnna Pendergrass, DVM
By: JoAnna Pendergrass, DVM
Illustration of NK Cells, T Cells, other immune cells floating across white background

The innate immune system is upregulated in children hospitalized with acute asthma exacerbations, signaling a need for therapies that target innate immune pathways to help control acute asthma flare-ups more effectively.  Asthma affects more than 6 million children in the United States, yet little is known about the immune responses that occur with acute asthma…

Quality Improvement Approach Reduces Pediatric Asthma Emergency Department Visits by 33%
 Quality Improvement Approach Reduces Pediatric Asthma Emergency Department Visits by 33% 770 513 JoAnna Pendergrass, DVM
By: JoAnna Pendergrass, DVM

With institutional support, a primary care-based quality improvement initiative markedly reduced asthma-related emergency department visits for children with asthma. Researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital implemented a quality improvement (QI) project that reduced pediatric asthma emergency department (ED) visits by 33% from 2010 to 2019. Stephen Hersey, MD, a pediatrician in Nationwide Children’s section of primary…

Understanding and Implementing the Latest Recommendations for Asthma Management
 Understanding and Implementing the Latest Recommendations for Asthma Management 770 513 Emily Siebenmorgen
By: Emily Siebenmorgen

New guidelines for the care and treatment of asthma in children were released in 2020, but implementation has been slowed by the pandemic and need for education. An estimated 8% of children had asthma in 2020, and it continues to have a significant impact in the lives of many kids. It interferes with their sports…

How Does Allergic Disease Protect Against Developing Asthma After Viral Infection?
 How Does Allergic Disease Protect Against Developing Asthma After Viral Infection? 1024 523 Mary Bates, PhD
By: Mary Bates, PhD

Neutrophils and IL-4 are critical in preventing post-viral airway disease in mice with pre-existing allergic disease. In a new study, researchers from Nationwide Children’s Hospital show that in a mouse mode simulating human respiratory viral infection, pre-existing allergic disease prevents the development of asthma following viral infection. Further experiments revealed that this protection against post-viral…

Featured Researcher — Rodney Britt, PhD
 Featured Researcher — Rodney Britt, PhD 150 150 Natalie Wilson
By: Natalie Wilson

Rodney D. Britt Jr., PhD, is a principal investigator in the Center for Perinatal Research at the Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and an assistant professor of Pediatrics at The Ohio State University. Dr. Britt earned his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from North Carolina A&T State University and his doctorate degree in…

Even Severe Asthma Can Improve if Guidelines Are Followed
 Even Severe Asthma Can Improve if Guidelines Are Followed 1024 683 Mary Bates, PhD
By: Mary Bates, PhD

Patients treated with adequate medications and asthma family education can significantly improve irrespective of asthma severity. Severe asthma accounts for 5-8% of patients with asthma, but this group is more challenging to treat and is responsible for up to 40% of total asthma-care expenses. The majority of patients with severe asthma have difficult-to-treat asthma (in…

Increasing the Use of the Teach-Back Method in Asthma Education
 Increasing the Use of the Teach-Back Method in Asthma Education 1024 575 JoAnna Pendergrass, DVM
By: JoAnna Pendergrass, DVM
Lisa Ulrich standing in hospital hallway

A standardized approach to asthma education using the teach-back method helps respiratory therapists effectively address common issues with asthma management in pediatric patients. For the 8% of children and adults in the United States who have asthma, effective asthma education is essential to adequate disease management. Unfortunately, written asthma action plans (AAP) alone may be…

Reducing Asthma-Related Emergency Department Visits
 Reducing Asthma-Related Emergency Department Visits 480 320 Abbie Miller
By: Abbie Miller

Through serial interventions and teamwork, the initiative reduced asthma-related ED utilization rates by nearly 4% per year at a time when national rates were rising. Numerous studies have demonstrated that quality improvement (QI) methodologies improve asthma outcomes. However, moving that success from individual patients to a large population is challenging. In a recent study published…

QI Project Increases Value of Asthma Care in a Large Primary Care Network
 QI Project Increases Value of Asthma Care in a Large Primary Care Network 1024 393 Kevin Mayhood
By: Kevin Mayhood

Multiple steps lead to better control of disease, fewer emergency department visits and $5 million in savings. A quality improvement project helped kids achieve better control of their asthma, reduced emergency room visits and cut costs in a primary care network serving 10,000 children with the disease. Through multiple steps, including standardizing assessments and documentation,…

Immune Cell Subtype Tied to Asthma in Mice Found in Humans With Viral Infections
 Immune Cell Subtype Tied to Asthma in Mice Found in Humans With Viral Infections 969 533 Kevin Mayhood
By: Kevin Mayhood
Illustration of NK Cells, T Cells, other immune cells floating across white background

If asthma development in people parallels mice, the cells’ mechanisms may provide a target for disease prevention. A subtype of neutrophil, labeled CD49d+ PMN, which is necessary to drive asthma and allergies in a mouse model, also accumulates in the nasal fluid of people with symptoms of an upper respiratory viral infection, researchers have discovered. Neutrophils are…

Teens With Asthma: A High School Diploma Does Not Equal Readiness for Self-Management
 Teens With Asthma: A High School Diploma Does Not Equal Readiness for Self-Management 150 150 David Stukus, MD
By: David Stukus, MD

Poorly controlled asthma takes a toll on numerous aspects of health and life. Asthma is the leading pediatric chronic health condition, affecting approximately 10 percent of children and adolescents. Uncontrolled asthma can lead to acute exacerbations and need for emergency department visits or hospitalizations. A frequently unrecognized toll of poorly controlled asthma is the impact…

Great Minds Aren’t Thinking Alike About Asthma Care
 Great Minds Aren’t Thinking Alike About Asthma Care 150 150 Brianne Moore
By: Brianne Moore

A recent audit of the Pediatric Hospital Information System using template matching finds wide variation in care provided to pediatric asthma patients. While asthma is a common and manageable disease, nine people still die from asthma each day. It is well known that asthma is the leading cause of pediatric hospitalization as well as the…

Become a Myth Buster: Use Evidence-Based Medicine to Change Clinical Care
 Become a Myth Buster: Use Evidence-Based Medicine to Change Clinical Care 150 150 David Stukus, MD
By: David Stukus, MD

Medical myths abound, even among good doctors. How are medical myths perpetuated and how can they be stopped? When was the last time you took a step back and questioned your medical decision making? Why did you decide to prescribe that treatment at that dosage and for that exact duration? Was that test truly necessary…

Racism in Our Hospitals and Communities: Everyone Matters
 Racism in Our Hospitals and Communities: Everyone Matters 150 150 Kelly Kelleher, MD, MPH
By: Kelly Kelleher, MD, MPH

Let’s touch all families by erasing racism from children’s hospitals. Here at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, we are engaged in an important new initiative: Everyone Matters. The idea is simple — we each have effects that ripple far beyond us through our everyday actions and attitudes toward each other, our patients and our community. Those effects can be…