Working together to help children with asthma
Birmingham Women's and Children's NHS Foundation Trust (BWC) are coming together with GPs, hospitals, and schools from across Birmingham in order to provide asthma care to children in the most deprived areas of the city.
The Paediatric Asthma Systems Approach involves three pilot projects designed to improve access to healthcare for children with asthma, make asthma treatment more consistent and uniform, and engage the local community with healthcare.
The first project involves running asthma clinics in GP surgeries in North and South Birmingham through the Midland Medical Partnership. These clinics provide specialist support to children with asthma, putting them on the right treatment and referring them onto hospital if needed.
The second project, based in the east of the city, allowed a specialist asthma nurse to be based in an urgent care centre, allowing them to give advice to patients directly, without the need for an extra referral.
In West Birmingham, the final project involves a risk stratification approach, where a specialist nurse sees high and medium risk patients, while clinics at GP surgeries look after low-risk patients.
After starting in March 2022, all three projects have combined to see around 300 asthmatic children in Birmingham and has allowed different organisations to share their knowledge to give a uniform way of treating these patients.
Dr Satish Rao, Deputy Medical Director, said: “We have used this project to build consistency of treatment and working together as a group to take everyone’s expertise. It has also allowed us to build links in the community, such as schools, GP surgeries and faith groups.”
One opportunity came from Benson School in Hockley, which has gone from having educational workshops to now being a community hub for the asthma team to help them engage in the community. Also, a group of sixth formers from Aston Engineering Academy are informing the team how better to engage with young people, and gaining future career development from the project.
Dr Rao commented: “We are showing the opportunities the NHS to continue to have an impact in the community and help young people with future career opportunities.
“Our project has helped create multiple referral sources for asthma patients to get treatment, and from a range of community centres at times that suit them. This has included training teachers to help their students with asthma.”
The project will continue over 24 months and aims to grow further into some of Birmingham’s most deprived communities by engaging more schools and GP surgeries. These pilots are helping us develop a new model of care to meet the holistic needs of children and young people by bringing various health and non-health agencies together in Birmingham and Solihull.