Asthma Vans Win CHEST Foundation’s 2018 Community Service Award

Mobile Care Chicago was presented with the Community Service Award at the CHEST Foundation’s meeting in San Antonio on October 8th, 2018. The award is given to just three organizations in the country was in recognition of Mobile Care’s home environment assessment program. This program helps children and families with severe, uncontrolled allergic-asthma avoid the ER, miss less school, and breathe more easily.

In children with allergic asthma, allergens like dust, mold, mildew, and tobacco smoke, etc cause their lung airways to close. Mobile Care’s home assessment program couples clinic care with a community health worker to help families identify and eliminate triggers in their home.

Last year alone, with funding from the EPA Region 5, 50 children received home assessments and saw dramatic improvements in their asthma symptoms. They also missed less school and had to go to the ER less.

Mobile Care Chicago began providing home environment assessments in 2012 for children who struggled to breathe, and frequently ended up in local ER’s or even in intensive care for asthma. In 2013, we partnered with the local chapter of the American Lung Association to fix the problems we found in the homes of our patients. The ALA has been an incredible partner, providing vacuum cleaners, mattress and pillow covers that block allergens, cleaning solutions that can be used by people with asthma, and even in some extreme cases, gutting walls where mold has been found or replacing mattresses.

Mobile Care would like to thank all of the partners, donors, and foundations that have made this work possible. In the coming year, Mobile Care will work to expand this program and provide more of these life-changing home assessments for children with allergic-asthma.