Dr. Robert Vinetz, pediatrician at our Bresee Clinic, Director of our Pediatric Asthma Disease Management Program and also Co-chair of the Asthma Coalition of Los Angeles County, was invited to Washington D.C. in early June by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Merck Childhood Asthma Network (MCAN).

At the EPA’s 2009 National Asthma Forum: Communities in Action for Asthma-Friendly Environments, Dr. Vinetz convened with over 250 other community asthma leaders and representatives from asthma coalitions throughout the nation. The Annual Forum offers a way for community and public health advocates to meet formally and informally to learn and exchange ideas on the latest and most successful ways for communities to control asthma. Forum participants were welcomed by the new Director of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, and participated in workshops such as ‘Building Effective Community Asthma Control Systems’, ‘Integrated Health Care Services’, ‘Leveraging Community Assets for Asthma Program Success’ and many more.

MCAN’s National Asthma Policy Roundtable and Workshop convened some 30 asthma “thought leaders” from throughout the nation to present and discuss asthma policy issues and ideas that need to play a role in the larger national health policy revision discussions currently occurring in our nation’s capitol. The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services and the RCHN Community Health Foundation partnered with MCAN in sponsoring this meeting.

Five key dimensions of asthma policy were discussed at the Roundtable: (1) housing and health; (2) coverage and access; (3) quality measurement, improvement and reporting; (4) reducing health and health care disparities, and; (5) integrating health, health care, educational, social and environmental interventions. Dr. Vinetz had the opportunity to meet with many key individuals dealing with pediatric asthma, including Floyd Malveaux, MD, Executive Director of MCAN. Throughout the 1990’s, Dr. Malveaux was instrumental in the landmark Inner-City Asthma Program and its National Cooperative Inner-City Asthma Study which focused largely on underserved children with asthma… the same population served by QueensCare Family Clinics’ pediatric asthma program.

Dr. Vinetz, with great enthusiasm, says that he enjoyed and professionally benefitted enormously from the two meetings and, even more, that the invitations indicate that QueensCare Family Clinics has become a nationally recognized leader in the care of underserved children with asthma.

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