County Asthma Program Offers Free Education and Resources in Time for Spring’s Allergens
The free program provides participants with home visits to assess environmental triggers and educational resources to control symptoms
By Zoë Buhrmaster
As spring’s sweet air finds its way to the Flathead Valley, so too does the seasonal spike in pollen and its triggers for respiratory diseases like asthma.
In Montana, just under 12% of adults and approximately 6.3%, or 14,000, children currently have asthma, according to the Montana Asthma Burden Report. About half of these adults and one-in-four children have uncontrolled asthma, entailing more frequent use of a rescue inhaler and having to limit activities due to asthma.
In 2023, the total cost for asthma-related hospitalizations and emergency department visits exceeded $8.7 million in the state.
Jillian Boll, a community health nurse, works with the Montana Asthma Program (MAP), a free program geared toward those with uncontrolled asthma to limit hospitalizations by helping curb severe symptoms and filling any knowledge gaps.
“I can’t tell you how many people may receive their inhaler and they’re like, ‘I don’t know how to use this,” Boll said. “There’s all the different types of devices, so I spend a lot of time on just how to use it.”
Boll and other community nurses in the program also help children and adults assess allergens and administer the appropriate treatments.
Over the course of a year, a registered nurse will drop by for six home visits, assessing the home for environmental triggers and ways to reduce them, along with personally educating the enrollee on asthma and how to manage it as they age. If necessary, participants can receive free allergen-proof mattress and pillow covers and a High-Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) grade air filter.
Requirements to enroll in Flathead County’s chapter are simple. Adults or children must live in the county, have had an asthma-related hospitalization, emergency room, or urgent care visit in the last 12 months or have an Asthma Control Test score of less than 20.
If they don’t meet these requirements, however, they can still be referred into the program by a family member, friend, or themselves, through a big blue button that sits at the top of the county program’s website.
“Anybody can refer,” Boll said. “Clicking the button, putting in their name, that goes straight to me, and we can have those conversations and see if they’d be open to this free service that we could give them.”
The program is funded through an annual chronic disease prevention grant the county receives from Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS).
Malia Freeman, the county’s population health supervisor, said the current grant is set to end on June 30 and that they “anticipate our department will receive the grant again for next fiscal year but will not hear official confirmation on that from DPHHS for another month or so.”
As of right now, Boll said there are 14 people active in the program, with another currently in the enrollment process.
“There are some families where they are well versed and they understand,” Boll said. “But then there are some families that get overwhelmed by it.”