The #AskAboutAsthma campaign launches this week with the aim of highlighting simple changes that can be made to children and young people’s care that will make a big difference to how they experience their asthma.
Asthma is a common lung condition that causes occasional breathing difficulties. It affects people of all ages and often starts in childhood, although it can also develop for the first time in adults.
There’s currently no cure, but there are simple treatments and most people with asthma can live normal lives.
The #AskAboutAsthma campaign will run from 3rd October for a week and encourages children and young people, their families and those involved in their care to follow four simple and effective steps to help them manage their asthma.
The four steps are:
- getting an asthma plan in place to prevent unnecessary visits to hospital
- understand how to use inhalers correctly
- schedule an asthma review every year and after every attack with an appropriately trained clinician
- consider air pollution and its impact on lung health.
Nurses from EPUT (Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust) will be at Southend Victoria shopping centre on the afternoons of Tuesday 4th October and Wednesday 5th October at the Climate Change Hub to talk to the public about asthma in children and young people. They will be doing peak flow, a simple measurement of how quickly you can blow air out of your lung, with members of the public as well as educating people on inhaler technique and raising awareness of triggers.
You can also find out more information about asthma in children here.