National Asthma Strategy

Asthma policies regarding school children in Australia

Early stage of children’s life provides groundwork for their future development, well-being and health. 1 out of 10 Australian children is diagnosed with asthma and it is one of the most common reasons for their visit to hospital (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2018). Presently, asthma has no cure. In this regard, Australian government and several individual state have endorsed several policies for the prevention and well-being of children suffering from asthma. Some of those policies are discussed below.

National Asthma Strategy 2018

The aim of this policy is to lessen the impacts of asthma in social, economic, and health aspects and optimization of asthma management and diagnosis. Main focus of this strategy is to better management of people suffering from asthma. This strategy follows eight guiding principles regarding future actions related to chronic respiratory condition and asthma. These eight guiding principle are equity for every Australians including aboriginals, partnerships and collaboration, access, person centred approach, evidence based approach, sustainability, transparency and accountability, and shared responsibility (National Asthma Strategy 2018 2018).

New South Wales Government guideline for acute management of asthma

This policy aims to guide clear direction to all medical practitioner to provide best possible service in every part of the state. This policy was created by clinical experts for the NSW Department of Health. This is a guideline for suitable tactic for the management of acute asthma in children and infants. This policy is basically a guide but not a strict authoritative protocol. This protocol is also placed in all the local clinical facilities and hospitals to manage better and assess paediatric asthma patients which will be implemented by the chief executives (Infants and Children – Acute Management of Asthma 2012).

Asthma Guidelines for Victorian schools by the Asthma Foundation, Victoria

Almost 90 percent of all government school in Victoria have a child enrolled who is diagnosed with asthma. As asthma has no cure as of now, the effective ways to prevent asthma are awareness, education and planning. This policy was developed to help the schools with asthma student for better support and planning. This guidelines include detailed information on preventive strategies, medical data regarding asthma, staff training, communication plan, management policy for asthma, emergency asthma equipment, risk management, and legal obligation for school. According to this guidelines, all school must have adequate amount of emergency kit stored (Education.vic.gov.au 2018).

Infants and Children – Acute Management of Asthma

South Australia Clinical Guideline

This program was introduced by South Australia Child Health Clinical Network and sanctioned by South Australia Health Safety & Strategic Governance Committee. This is a fresh policy but updated and replaced an existing policy known as Management of Acute Asthma in Children, WCH Guideline. Similarly like the previous policy, this policy also mainly targeted at healthcare professionals working at any primary care, regional or general hospitals. The goal of this guideline is to provide information about the minimum requirement and assessment needed for management of acute asthma. This guideline applies to all the health network inside South Australia. This guideline also excludes some scenario which might need to manage differently than general such as infants under the age of 1 year and patients with life threatening asthma admitted in ICU (Sahealth.sa.gov.au 2018).

Greenvale Primary School Asthma Policy

Greenvale Primary School has ratified their asthma policy to guarantee the well-being and health of the attending students.  In this policy, the school has set up various implementation steps for all the involved party which are school, staffs, students, and parents. The school also have a written instruction manual to be followed in case of asthma emergency (Asthma Policy 2015).

Toorak Primary School Asthma Policy

Similarly like the previous policy, Toorak primary school also have their own asthma policy to ensure safety of their students in case of camps or excursion. According to their policy, each student with asthma must have a written asthma management plan in accordance with Asthma Victoria’s guidelines. They will also evaluate policy annually (Asthma 2016).

Health sector has been being advised by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for the last few decades to move into the direction of health promotion, apart from its duty to provide curative and clinical services (Cyril, Smith and Renzaho 2015). One of the models that can be applied to health promotion is known as Bensberg’s model of ‘Strategies for Health Promotion’ (Lee et al. 2013). This model includes seven strategies for typical health promotion regarding a particular population foci like children or young people. These seven strategies regarding healthcare population have been discussed below.

Screening, risk assessment and immunization

The purpose of this step is to detect and assess an individual with pre-eminent risk factors. Early stage detection is vital for preventing chronic diseases. Immunization also plays a significant role in preventing a disease, but, at present, there is no cure or immunization for asthma. As a result, only prevention and early detection can help and reduce the spread of asthma.

Asthma Management in Schools

Health information

Information can help an individual to understand cause of illness better as well as it will help medical practitioner to take informed decision regarding the illness. For example, television promotion in hospital or emergency department should help a parent to be better informed about their child’s illness such as asthma (Lee et al. 2013).

Health education, development of skills and counselling

The target of this step is to persuade individuals to change their behaviour for healthier lives.  Counselling helps parents to take better and informed decision about their child’s health. To cite one example, nurses in emergency department were provided with thorough knowledge of asthma management to reduce its occurrence.

Community activity

Community activity encourages a community to use their own resources to sustain and develop their own promotion strategies. Apart from that, trained community members can be useful during busy times and can assist the nurses. They can also act as an advocate to patients in non-medical concerns (Lee et al. 2013).

Social marketing

Goal of social marketing is to aware people about various health related issues and to influence and persuade to change their daily habits. Hospitals, community services, and healthcare personnel can distribute posters, pamphlets, and brochure related asthma to aware parents about asthma prevention strategy (Lee et al. 2013).

Organisational development

Organisational development plays a vital role to ensure safe and supportive environment for health promotion strategies. Also, development needed to tackle a particular type of chronic disease. For instance, to handle asthma, a medical institution need to have ample amount asthma emergency kit in their store to handle huge number of admittance.

Regulatory and economic activity

This step aims to promote and advocate for various legislative activities to promote healthcare activities. Government can introduce specific act related to asthma which will make nurses to learn asthma protection care mandatory by law (Lee et al. 2013).

According to WHO, advocacy means gaining political support, political comment and social acceptance for a particular health issue by involving social and individual actions. Advocacy can be implemented by using multimedia, mass media, community action or direct political lobbying.

Principles of equity, rights and access with regards to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander

Asthma is two time more prevalent in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people compared to non-aboriginal Australians (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2018). Along with that smoking rate, which is a major contributing factor for asthma, also much higher in the amongst the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Studies have shown that almost 45 percentage of aboriginal people aged 15 years or above smoke daily which is two times more compared to the non-aboriginal people (Populations – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples 2016). This is also true for people living in socio-economically underprivileged area. Mortality rate of asthma is also higher in case aboriginal people (Banham et al. 2017). Disparities in health among aboriginal and non-aboriginal Australians have long been observed. Inequity between them is one of the significant factor behind it. According to the researchers, only equality or equal access will not resolve this situation because aboriginal Australians live much less privileged life compared to non-aboriginal Australians (Donato and Segal 2013). Researchers argued that they might need greater access and more care for the same health issues (Baba, Brolan and Hill 2014).  For instance, in the state New South Wales, fund allocation takes the need of specific geographical region into consideration. Indigenous or aboriginal people have greater need compared to non-aboriginal Australians, so the allocation gets multiplied by 2.5 for them (Penno, Gauld and Audas 2013). Along with that, Australian government have also started some health initiatives for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people such as Asthma Spacer Ordering System and The Indigenous Chronic Disease Package. Asthma Spacer Ordering System offers low cost asthma spacers to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people whereas The Indigenous Chronic Disease Package offers support to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with chronic disease or have high possibility of chronic disease (Populations – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples 2016). Equitable service or access to healthcare does not depends on individual’s fortune, paying ability or fame. This means an individual have impartial access to the same resources as an individual with higher privilege, money or social status. National Asthma Strategy of Australian government also have a national framework to manage and optimise asthma diagnosis for vulnerable and less privileged people. They have different policy and strategy with respect to different threat factors like population groups and health conditions such as the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan 2013–2023 (Health.gov.au 2018). In a nutshell, national resources must be set aside and allocate them appropriate and quality manner to the people with greater need. It also need political direction that will help to strengthen the foundation and will work to build on it to provide equitable healthcare for all Australians in need.

References

Asthma Policy. 2015. [ebook] Greenvale Public School. Available at: https://greenvaleps.vic.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Asthma-Policy.pdf [Accessed 10 Oct. 2018].

Asthma. 2016. [ebook] Toorak Policy School. Available at: https://www.toorakps.vic.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/TPS-Asthma-Policy-doc-2016.pdf [Accessed 10 Oct. 2018].

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. 2018. Chronic respiratory conditions Overview – Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. [online] Available at: https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports-statistics/health-conditions-disability-deaths/asthma-other-chronic-respiratory-conditions/overview [Accessed 10 Oct. 2018].

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. 2018. Chronic respiratory conditions Overview – Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. [online] Available at: https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports-statistics/health-conditions-disability-deaths/chronic-respiratory-conditions/overview [Accessed 10 Oct. 2018].

Baba, J.T., Brolan, C.E. and Hill, P.S., 2014. Aboriginal medical services cure more than illness: a qualitative study of how Indigenous services address the health impacts of discrimination in Brisbane communities. International Journal for Equity in Health, 13(1), p.56 https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-9276-13-56.

Banham, D., Chen, T., Karnon, J., Brown, A. and Lynch, J., 2017. Sociodemographic variations in the amount, duration and cost of potentially preventable hospitalisation for chronic conditions among Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians: A period prevalence study of linked public hospital data. BMJ open, 7(10), p.e017331 https://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-017331.

Cyril, S., Smith, B.J. and Renzaho, A.M., 2015. Systematic review of empowerment measures in health promotion. Health promotion international, 31(4), pp.809-826 https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/dav059.

Donato, R. and Segal, L., 2013. Does Australia have the appropriate health reform agenda to close the gap in Indigenous health?. Australian Health Review, 37(2), pp.232-238 https://doi.org/10.1071/AH12186.

Education.vic.gov.au. 2018. Asthma. [online] Available at: https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/principals/spag/health/Pages/conditionasthma.aspx [Accessed 10 Oct. 2018].

Health.gov.au. 2018. Department of Health | National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan 2013-2023. [online] Available at: https://www.health.gov.au/natsihp [Accessed 12 Oct. 2018].

Infants and Children – Acute Management of Asthma. 2012. [ebook] NSW, Health. Available at: https://www1.health.nsw.gov.au/pds/ActivePDSDocuments/PD2012_056.pdf [Accessed 10 Oct. 2018].

Lee, C.B., Chen, M.S., Powell, M.J. and Chu, C.M.Y., 2013. Organisational change to health promoting hospitals: a review of the literature. Springer Science Reviews, 1(1-2), pp.13-23 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40362-013-0006-7.

National Asthma Strategy 2018. 2018. [ebook] National Asthma Council Australia. Available at: https://assets.nationalasthma.org.au/resources/National-Asthma-Strategy-2018.pdf [Accessed 10 Oct. 2018].

Penno, E., Gauld, R. and Audas, R., 2013. How are population-based funding formulae for healthcare composed? A comparative analysis of seven models. BMC health services research, 13(1), p.470 https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-13-470.

Populations – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. 2016. [ebook] Melbourne: National Asthma Council, Australia. Available at: https://www.asthmahandbook.org.au/uploads/5804305de17ed.pdf [Accessed 12 Oct. 2018].

Sahealth.sa.gov.au. (2018). SA Health Clinical Practice Guidelines :: SA Health. [online] Available at: https://www.sahealth.sa.gov.au/wps/wcm/connect/Public+Content/SA+Health+Internet/Clinical+resources/SA+Health+Clinical+Practice+Guidelines/ [Accessed 10 Oct. 2018].