Management of Asthma: Beyond the Cost
Impact on Society/Complex Issues of Public Health Funding
Kevin Weiss
Center for Healthcare Studies
Chicago, IL
While it is clear that regardless of the country of interest,
asthma morbidity represents a substantive public impact on health,
productivity, and quality of life. Therefore it is important to
consider ways by which public funding can be used to reduce this
social impact. At first glance it would seem that such a problem
can be best solved solely through improvements in asthma care
through direct publicly funding patient care services. However
due to the complex nature of most health care systems, there are
many ways that public funding can offer leverage to reductions
in the societal burden of this disease. A recent report of health
policy recommendations for the US health system can provide some
insight to the multi-dimensional approached to use of public funding
toward improving asthma care. While many of the issues in leveraging
public funding will be country specific, there may be a few common
approaches to health policy and asthma care that are worth exploiting.
