The Philadelphia Regional Center for Children’s Environmental Health Community Asthma Prevention Program (CAPP) in Chester, PA, provides direct intervention for families to reduce childhood asthma. Chester is an environmental justice community reported to have high asthma rates and limited healthcare resources. 

CAPP operates a Home Visitor Program utilizing peer community health workers to teach in-home classes and provide families with supplies to mitigate asthma triggers in the home environment. Over the course of 2 years the program has served 99 families in the Chester area. CAPP also provides Asthma 101 classes at community sites in Chester, and uses a stakeholder advisory group to connect with local nonprofit organizations, schools, universities, hospitals and insurance providers. The goal is to improve asthma-related outcomes in children.

Community Health Workers (CHW) are the foundation of the CAPP program, and they work directly with families.  Success stories include:

• Due to Flovent being discontinued all over for PA, our CHW assisted a family in getting their medication by mail. 
• Our CHW helped a family concerned about losing access to their child’s inhaler medication because of a recent change in insurance.  She connected the family with the insurance provider and assisted in confirming the coverage.
• When a family’s power was cut off and there was a risk that their refrigerated medicine would go bad, our CHW contacted the energy company to get a medical extension and the power turned back on within hours. 
• Our CHW trained a mother in how to administer asthma medication properly, and then when the child lost the medication, intervened to get an insurance waiver for controller medicine.