Connecticut Coalition for
Environmental Justice

CCEJ's Hartford Asthma Speakers Bureau

For over four years, CCEJ's Asthma Education and Outreach Program has aided  residents of Hartford, CT by teaching them  to educate other residents to identify asthma signs & symptoms and to refer friends and family to medical care. These grassroots, trained lay people target those most at risk of developing asthma and put at most disadvantage by the illness, namely low-income people, communities of color, people on Medicaid, and the uninsured. Outreach by the CCEJ Asthma Speakers’ Bureau, as our educators are referred to, has helped city residents avoid asthma attacks that can result in emergency room visits or hospitalization by referring people to medical professionals.

The Asthma Speakers Bureaus truly gets the word into the community on asthma and its dangers, making the message real and alive for our audiences. ASB conducts direct public outreach and referrals to medical care at churches, health fairs, nonprofits, GED classes, and other locales; members also table at several events including Clay Hill Recognition Day, Hope Out Loud at Bushnell Park, and Earth Day at Hartford City Hall. The ASB reached over 600 people in Hartford through one-on-one contact during 2008.

The effectiveness of the Asthma Speakers Bureau and related outreach by CCEJ has been borne out by a random telephone survey of Hartford residents. Two thirds of the respondents indicated that they had heard of the Asthma Outreach Program. Forty percent of those who had heard of the program stated that they acted on the information they had received. This is a remarkable response to a community outreach and referral program and shows that tens of thousands of people are indeed responding to the program in Hartford alone.