December 11th, 2018
Ashma is a major health concern. Almost 26 million people have asthma in the United States, and the costs to society areestimated to be over $56 billion annually. Asthma is controllable, and since 1999, the National Asthma Control Program (NACP), in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Air Pollution and Respiratory Health Branch (APRHB), has been working with national and state-level partners to promote strategies and programs that will reduce this burden and help persons with asthma lead healthy, productive lives.
For the past 15 years, the NACP has funded selected states to address asthma from a public health perspective. NACP has supported states to develop state-specific asthma surveillance systems; partnerships for coordinated efforts to address state asthma goals and objectives; and interventions to control asthma among persons living with asthma. As evaluation is an essential function of public health, NACP has always acknowledged its importance and in the 2009 funding cycle, the NACP launched an unprecedented strategy aiming
to build and advance evaluation capacity among its funded grantees. By including evaluation among the many charges to state programs and requiring a half-time evaluator, the 2009 funding cycle particularly highlighted evaluation as an explicit priority.