Jill Suzanne Halterman, M.D., M.P.H.

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Dr. Halterman's primary research interests are: Asthma and Improving quality of care. Asthma is the most common chronic illness of childhood. While national guidelines recommend daily preventive medications for all children with moderate to severe asthma, studies indicate that many children in the U.S. who should receive preventive medications are not receiving them. Although young urban children suffer the largest burden from asthma, they are the least likely group to receive adequate preventive care. Thus, there is a substantial amount of suffering that could be prevented with improvements in care. The goal of the Preventive Care Program for Young Urban Children with Asthma is to improve preventive care and decrease harmful environmental exposures (specifically secondhand smoke) for young urban children with asthma through the following programs:

Project 1: Asthma and Prematurity Intervention This study provides ongoing early life education to parents of very small premature infants about asthma prevention and early symptom recognition, routine assessments by a lung specialist, and communications with the child's physician about respiratory issues. This is a three-year longitudinal follow-up program to ascertain the development of asthma symptoms over time and to identify the most prominent risk factors for the development of asthma in low birth weight infants.

Project 2: Preschool and School-Based Asthma Screening Program This study focuses on enhancing asthma care for poor children living in Rochester through city-wide preschool and school-based asthma symptom screening and health care provider notification. Communication between school personnel and health care providers may improve overall asthma care for these children, and increase the proportion of children receiving preventive medications.

Project 3: Office-Based Asthma Screening Program A study of systematic office-based screening will be implemented to assist primary care physicians in identifying children with significant asthma and improve preventive care for asthma. This study will take place in three primary care practices that serve a large proportion of the children in the City of Rochester. We hypothesize that standardized screening in the office setting will improve the physician's ability to (a) identify children with significant asthma and (b) prescribe appropriate preventive medications.

Project 4: Pilot Work to Reduce Secondhand Smoke Exposure Through a previous study we found that providing preventive asthma medications to children every day in school was beneficial, but only for children who were not exposed to secondhand smoke in the home. Strikingly, almost half of the children studied were exposed to environmental tobacco smoke. Pilot work is being conducted (including in-depth interviews and focus groups with parents) in order to develop a new intervention to decrease secondhand smoke exposure for children with asthma.

Specialty

General Pediatrics

Current Appointments

• Associate Professor - Department of Pediatrics (SMD)