The public health surveillance of asthma

Asthma is a highly prevalent disease that affects the quality of life of ma ny people in the United States. Yet there is limited descriptive epidemiolo gical understanding of the disease, particularly at the state and local lev els. Minimal surveillance of asthma is occurring across the country. Survei llance of a disease requires that public health workers have the ability to accurately identify cases, have access to needed data, and have adequate r esources so that they can collect, assess, report, and use the data-all con siderable challenges in the case of asthma. We consider four groups of ques tions that asthma surveillance should address: (1) How much asthma is there and what are the trends in asthma occurrence over time? (2) How severe is the asthma and what are the trends in asthma severity over time ? (3) How w ell is asthma controlled and what are the trends in asthma management over time ? (4) What is the cost of asthma Because wise decision making in publi c health depends on the availability of appropriate data for program planni ng, implementation and evaluation we encourage increased surveillance of as thma in jurisdictions across the country.