Republished from our friends at the National Center for Healthy Housing.

Columbia, MD (February 13, 2014) –The National Center for Healthy Housing (NCHH), the King County Housing Authority (KCHA), and Public Health–Seattle and King County recently completed a study showing that combining weatherization and healthy home interventions with in-home asthma education from community health workers (CHW) significantly improves childhood asthma control.

“We have long known that trained CHWs can successfully work with families to improve a child’s asthma,” said Breysse, a program manager with NCHH. “This study’s findings show that even greater benefits can be achieved when CHW programs are coupled with weatherization home repairs. This project also shows that partnerships between weatherization and public health agencies are feasible and effective.”

Published online in the January edition of the American Journal of Public Health, the study, “Effect of Weatherization Combined with Community Health Worker In-Home Education on Asthma Control,” assessed the asthma control benefits of adding weatherization and health interventions to an existing in-home CHW education program versus a traditional model of health education alone.

“Like other chronic health problems, preventing and controlling asthma is not just about individual behavior. It takes changing the unhealthy environments where people live, and supporting them to develop the knowledge and skills to make meaningful differences in their health,” said Dr. James Krieger, chief of the Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention Section at Public Health–Seattle and King County.

In addition to NCHH, KCHA, and Public Health–Seattle and King County, this study involved schools and head start programs within the Highline School District area, an ethnically diverse, primarily low-income area in southwest King County, to identify study participants. Partnerships among these varied organizations allowed researchers to provide both physical housing remediation and family education interventions to families with children suffering from moderate to severe asthma and achieve better results than singular methods.

“The study findings point to exciting future possibilities for joint program design between housing authorities and local public health departments,” said Stephen Norman, executive director of the King County Housing Authority.

The complete article may be found here.

About the National Center for Healthy Housing
The National Center for Healthy Housing is the preeminent national nonprofit dedicated to creating safe and healthy housing for America’s families. It has trained over 35,000 individuals in lead-safe and healthy housing practices, and its research provides the scientific basis for major federal policies and programs. Follow NCHH on Twitter @nchh or become a fan on Facebook at Facebook.com/HealthyHousing. To see a video about NCHH, visit http://vimeo.com/59202134.