“To amend the Public Health Service Act with regard to research on asthma, and for other purposes.”
No CRS summary available for this bill.
This section sets forth congressional findings on asthma prevalence (more than 27.8 million people including 4.8 million children in 2023), disparities (higher rates among Black Americans, Native individuals, Puerto Ricans, people of multiple races, children, women, and those below the poverty threshold), mortality (more than 3,600 deaths), healthcare utilization (131,000 hospitalizations and 1.1 million emergency department visits in 2022), economic costs ($81.9 billion annually including missed school and work days), triggers (indoor and outdoor pollutants and allergens), gaps in guidelines-based care, and the National Asthma Control Program (no funding to 21 states despite $71 return per $1 invested).
This section revises CDC's asthma-related activities (42 U.S.C. 247b-10) to require (1) collaboration with state and local health departments to provide public information and education on preventing uncontrolled asthma consequences, asthma episodes, and management strategies; (2) development, within one year of enactment, of state strategic plans for asthma control emphasizing public health responses for disproportionately affected populations; (3) asthma surveillance to collect data on prevalence, severity, intervention effectiveness, and management quality—including from electronic health records—with annual publication of childhood and adult metrics (prevalence, mortality rates, hospital admissions, and emergency department visits disaggregated by state, age, sex, race, and ethnicity) and modernization of systems for real-time data exchange across healthcare, schools, and public health entities; (4) collaboration with nonprofit organizations on information and education; and (5) submission to Congress, within three years of enactment and biennially thereafter, of reports cataloging federal and nonfederal asthma activities, assessing progress toward Healthy People 2030 goals, and providing coordinated recommendations to reduce asthma's morbidity, mortality, prevalence, financial burden, and effects on underserved populations and those exposed to environmental triggers. (Data collection excludes individually identifiable information and uses consistent methodology for comparability.)