Imagine trying to catch your breath through a soda straw. Now imagine learning to read at the same time. That's the challenge of asthma, the #1 health-related reason that children nationwide miss school.
The Asthma Free School Zone (AFSZ) serves NYC schools and their surrounding communities by designating school zones with special signage; conducting environmental assessments and ambient air sampling; providing asthma and environmental health information to school and community members.
The AFSZ Difference
AFSZ is not just another asthma program. Rather, it aims for primary prevention: inhibiting the development or worsening of asthma by identifying and acting on health risks in the school microenvironment.
AFSZ Activities
Education: Underpinning the AFSZ program is the idea that education is key to all behavioral change, and with the right changes in knowledge, and in turn, attitude and practice, a school can manage asthma.
Research: When setting out to solve a public health problem there are three questions to ask: Is there a problem? Will it affect me or someone near me? What can be done about it? AFSZ air quality (AQ) research aims to answer the first question, Is there a problem?
Advocacy: Rather than reinvent the no-idling wheel school-by-school, AFSZ has been instrumental in pushing for and helping shape NYC and NYS idling policy where there was previously none and/or where it was on-the-books but routinely ignored.
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