Dr Michelle Cloutier Previews NAEPP Updates to Asthma Management Guidelines

Michelle M. Cloutier, MD, is professor emerita at UCONN Health in Farmington, Connecticut, and chair of the National Asthma Education and Prevention Program (NAEPP) Coordinating Committee Expert Panel Working Group. Cloutier will present "2020 Focused Updates to the Asthma Management Guidelines: Report from the U.S. NAEPPCC Expert Panel Working Group," at this year's American Thoracic Society (ATS) annual conference.

Transcript

Can you introduce yourself and preview the talk on Updates to Asthma Management Guidelines you will give at ATS 2021?

I'm Dr. Michelle Cloutier. I'm a pediatric pulmonologist, and I am an emerita professor of pediatrics and medicine at UCONN Health in Farmington, Connecticut.

The NAEPP Coordinating Committee decided several years ago to update the asthma guidelines, the last update having been released in 2007. They, along with another working group, determined 6 topics for updating. In July of 2018, the NAEPP Coordinating Committee convened a group of individuals, both asthma content experts as well as primary care clinicians, and health care policy dissemination and implementation people, to update the guidelines in these 6 focused topics. These guidelines were subsequently released in December of 2020.

Our talk on this at the American Thoracic Society meeting is to present, briefly, the 19 recommendations that emerged from this expert panel on these 6 focused topics.

What are you most looking forward to at the meeting?

I think it's really important for both the asthma specialty community as well as the asthma primary care community to understand these new recommendations, to understand how to incorporate these new recommendations into their practice, and to help them with making decisions with their patients regarding what kinds of therapies to implement in their particular patient population and in individuals themselves.