November 6, 2024

Comprehensive Asthma Resource List

ACU's Comprehensive Asthma Resource List has everything you need to create an asthma care home for your patients. In one location, you can find resources including clinical guidelines, patient education and self-management materials, policy briefs, asthma reports, clinical toolkits, mobile technology and asthma information, and smoking cessation and tobacco materials. Many of the resources are available in both English and Spanish, and some in other languages, including Chinese. Also included … [Read more...]

Michelle Lamb, Pharm.D., CDE, BCACP

Clinical pharmacist Michelle Lamb, Pharm.D., CDE, BCACP, takes pride in being part of a transdisciplinary health care team. She combines high tech (health IT is an important tool in enhancing patient care) with and high touch, delivering information tailored to the patient’s culture and literacy level. … [Read more...]

New Smartphone App on Tobacco Cessation

ACU has launched a new smartphone app that helps clinicians talk to patients about tobacco use. The app includes a six brief questions that clinicians can ask patients to measure their nicotine dependence. Release of the app coincides with the annual Great American Smokeout, a day when Americans are encouraged to make a plan to quit, or to plan in advance and quit smoking that day. The ACU Low Health Literacy Nicotine Addition Test scores the patient's responses to the six questions and … [Read more...]

Online Professional Training on Asthma Care

Two recorded webinars on comprehensive asthma management are now available online  from ACU. One webinar is in English, and the second, intended for community health workers, is available in Spanish. The two webinars compliment ACU's other asthma online professional resources. The goal of both webinars is to improve the quality of asthma care by training health care providers to incorporate in their care plans culturally and linguistically appropriate education on environmental asthma trigger … [Read more...]

Panel Defines Cultural Competencies

What does it take to prepare culturally competent clinicians? In their report, Cultural Competence in Education for Students in Medicine and Public Health (July 2012), an expert panel convened by the Association of American Medical College (AAMC) and the Association of Schools of Public Health (ASPH) identified a set of core competencies necessary to prepare culturally competent practitioners. The report provides tools for  faculty to integrate cultural competency education into the curriculum … [Read more...]

ACU Participates in Release of Federal Action Plan to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Asthma Disparities

Executive Director Kathie Westpheling spoke on behalf of ACU at a Washington, DC event May 31st marking the release of the Coordinated Federal Action Plan to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Asthma Disparities. Westpheling said "ACU is committed to working to reduce asthma health disparities in children. Our efforts include developing a clinical decision support tool for an electronic medical record that will include an environmental trigger assessment as part of a patient centered asthma care plan." … [Read more...]

Congratulations to these ACU staff!

Anna Gard, FNP, was awarded a scholarship to attend the George Washington School of Public Health “Health Information Technology for Clinician Leaders” graduate certificate program. She will begin this yearlong program in May to support her work in facilitating the implementation of health information technology in public health care organizations to improve population health outcomes. Lois Wessel, CFNP,  co-authored an article published in the Journal of Family Practice on simple strategies … [Read more...]

ACU member named to IOM Committee

Laurie Francis, BSN, MS, has been appointed to the Instituteof Medicine's Roundtable on Health Literacy representing ACU. The Roundtable brings together leaders from academia, industry, government, foundations and associations, and representatives of patient and consumer interests who work to improve health literacy. Health literacy is central to improving health outcomes, Ms. Francis says.  "Our clinic assessments revealed that 50 percent of clients suffer from diminished health literacy … [Read more...]