Asthma-Friendly Childcare


By providing evaluation tools and training to childcare facilities, Asthma-Friendly Childcare Project strives to prevent unnecessary asthma emergencies in the daycare setting by increasing the number of asthma-friendly childcare facilities.

Asthma-Friendly Childcare Project is funded in part by a grant from the Elizabeth McCormick Memorial Fund of The Chicago Community Trust.

A childcare facility is asthma-friendly if the facility:

  • is free of tobacco smoke at all times
  • has staff that have been well-trained in asthma management
  • uses "green" cleaning products
  • takes simple steps to eliminate common asthma triggers
  • implements asthma action plans for children under its care who have asthma

Asthma-friendly checklist for childcare facilities

To evaluate a childcare facility's level of asthma friendliness, Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago has developed an easy-to-use checklist in both English and Spanish.


Asthma management training for childcare facility staff

Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago offers online and hands-on asthma management trainings for childcare facility staff.  Attendees of these trainings will:

  •   learn how to recognize asthma
  •   know what to do once asthma starts
  •   understand asthma medications
  •   know how to better administer asthma medications
  •   know what is needed to care for a child with asthma
  •   be able to recognize and eliminate asthma triggers

 

Asthma-Friendly Childcare Testimonial

Lutheran Social Services has had representatives from five of its centers participate in Asthma-Friendly Chidlcare and has implemented more than 115 action steps to create new policies and procedures to improve care for children with asthma, such as implementing the use of a Child Medical Information Form and using asthma-friendly cleaning products. The changes have helped caregivers feel more confident in caring for children with asthma and how to meet their needs:

"The project worked well for our sites because it gave autonomy to the centers on choosing how they wanted to implement Asthma-Friendly Childcare to make it work best for them, yet still with the same end goal: decreasing asthma episodes in our students and creating an asthma-friendly environment."  
 Elizabeth Strain, Lutheran Social Services health and nutrition coordinator

  

Asthma management training online

An online version of our Asthma Management training for caregivers is available here. Click the screen image below to get started!  Part 1 covers "What is Asthma?" and Part 2 focuses on "How to Manage Asthma."

 
  

 

Asthma-Friendly Childcare project partners


To learn more about Asthma-Friendly Childcare,
or for information about additional trainings, contact Marc Rosen:
Email Marc
(312) 628-0229