Children and young people's asthma
Why it’s important
Asthma is the most common long-term medical condition in children. It affects 1 in 11 children, which equates to 2 children in every UK classroom. Asthma has significant impacts on a child’s health, well-being, and learning. It can lead to emergency hospital admissions, and absences from school.
#AskAboutAsthma
#AskAboutAsthma is an annual campaign run by Healthy London Partnership. The focus is about making simple changes to children and young people’s care that will make a big difference to how they experience their asthma.
The campaign encourages children and young people, their families, and those involved in their care, to ensure 4 simple and effective measures to help them control their asthma:
- Get an asthma action plan in place
- Understand how to use inhalers correctly
- Schedule an asthma review - every year and after every attack
- Consider air pollution and its impact on lung health
Asthma is directly affected by air quality. As part of the #AskAboutAsthma campaign this year our public health team contributed a blog outlining what Haringey is doing locally to address some of the wider factors affecting health that link to asthma. You can read it here.
For more information on the #AskAboutAsthma visit the Healthy London Partnership website (external link).
Support and resources
For more support with children and young people’s asthma, speak to your GP, health visitor, or school nurse.
- Find a GP (external link)
- Read more about health visiting and school nursing services (external link)
Further resources
- Asthma and Lung UK (external link)
- Children and young people’s asthma fact sheet (downloadable PDF)
- Asthma - NHS (external link)
- Translated asthma action plans (suitable for adults and children aged over 12) (external link)
Asthma Friendly Schools
The Asthma Friendly Schools (AFS) standards are central to managing children and young people’s asthma at primary and secondary schools. Achieving Asthma Friendly Schools status helps schools to support children in managing their asthma, prevent school absences, and reduce the chance of a child death attributable to asthma.
In Haringey, we support schools to achieve their Asthma Friendly Schools status.
Read more information about the Asthma Friendly Schools programme (external link).