Asthma

If you don't have asthma or know someone with asthma, it's hard to understand just how this disease can sneak up on you. Uncontrolled asthma can mean rushing to the emergency room, hospitalization, and even death.

The good news is that asthma can be controlled and the burden it places on patients greatly reduced. When their asthma is under control, people can spend less time in the doctor's office or hospital, and more time enjoying life.

• One in eight kids is diagnosed with asthma
• Annually, asthma causes almost two million ER visits¹

Learning from their success with diabetes, the City of Asheville, NC turned its attention to another problem disease—asthma. Employees and family members with asthma who participated received education about asthma and how to manage it, along with regular coaching and follow-up from a trained pharmacist. To encourage people to participate, medications were provided at no cost to them as long as they stayed in the program.

The results were dramatic: emergency room visits and hospital stays dropped. Overall medical costs were much lower than expected, even though medication costs increased. People were also less likely to miss work.²

As these examples show, by helping people stay healthy we can avoid many of the costs and consequences of having a disease.

Sadly, some people go without the medicines they need. There are medicines that manage and treat an illness, but if you can't get that medicine—because you are going through a bad time and have lost a job, lost your health insurance, or are just too sick to work—that will not make a difference in your life.

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