(WNY News Now) – Albany – Efforts to improve indoor air quality for asthma patients fall short as a new report reveals gaps in oversight, follow-up care, and outdated data.
The New York State Department of Health (DOH) continues to face challenges in managing indoor air quality for individuals with asthma, as highlighted in a follow-up audit issued on September 9, 2024. The report aimed to assess the implementation of six recommendations from an initial 2020 audit, which examined DOH’s partnership with Local Health Departments (LHDs) to reduce asthma-related hospitalizations through its Healthy Neighborhoods Program (HNP).
Asthma remains a serious public health concern in the United States, responsible for over 94,000 hospitalizations and nearly 1 million emergency department visits in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In New York alone, more than 1.4 million adults and 315,000 children suffer from the disease. Despite the HNP’s objective to reduce asthma triggers and improve housing conditions in high-risk neighborhoods, the latest report shows that significant gaps persist in the DOH’s oversight and monitoring of the program.
The HNP, operating through contracts with LHDs, conducted 17,352 home visits between January 2021 and June 2024. These visits aimed to identify poor indoor environmental conditions linked to asthma. Of the households visited, 5,139 had at least one person diagnosed with asthma. While these efforts are critical, the follow-up audit reveals that four of the six recommendations made in 2020 were only partially implemented, and two remain unaddressed.
Key findings from the follow-up audit include:
- Lack of Monitoring and Accountability: DOH did not consistently assess whether the contracted LHDs delivered services in the high-risk target areas, as outlined in their contracts. Furthermore, the department failed to provide 39 out of 106 required reports, raising concerns about the program’s accountability and overall effectiveness.
- Failure in Follow-Up Visits: The initial audit highlighted that LHDs did not conduct the required 1-year follow-up visits for households with identified asthma patients. DOH took no corrective action to ensure compliance with this critical component of the program.
- Outdated Public Data: The DOH’s public Asthma Dashboard, designed to provide updated data on asthma-related hospitalizations, emergency department visits, and deaths, remains significantly outdated. The most recent data available, at the time of audit fieldwork, was from 2016.
- No Comprehensive Evaluation: Despite the importance of the HNP, DOH has not conducted an overall evaluation to assess the program’s effectiveness or the performance of individual LHDs.
The CDC has long noted the increased risks COVID-19 poses to individuals with asthma, making effective air quality management more critical than ever.
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