Improving Asthma Care for Children was a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to test new approaches to managing asthma in children receiving care through Medicaid managed care — sometimes paid for through the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

Through the program, which ran from October 1999 through June 2005, RWJF funded five demonstrations of innovative asthma management practices. The five organizations — three in New York and one each in California and Missouri — were Medicaid managed care organizations. See Appendix 1 for list of projects and contact information.

Key Results

• The demonstration sites achieved varying levels of success, but all five reported significant improvement in at least one area of childhood asthma management.
• The projects as a group demonstrated that Medicaid managed care organizations can develop and implement interventions that have a favorable impact on the heath care of children with asthma and on the cost of asthma care.
• The grantee organizations integrated a number of their projects' administrative and policy changes and clinical care delivery improvements into their routine practices and procedures.

For more information see Overall Program Results and Key Site Results. For stories of people helped by the program, see the Story of Tyjhe Hargrove, the Story of Caleb Mahan and the Story of Fransheska and her Sister Yolamar.

Funding and Management
The RWJF Board of Trustees authorized the program in July 1999 for up to $3.25 million as part of a major effort to improve management of pediatric asthma in high-risk populations (see RWJF Strategy).

The Center for Health Care Strategies, formerly in Lawrenceville, N.J., and now in Hamilton, N.J., managed the program and provided technical assistance to the project staffs.