How a Collaboration Allowed More Medicaid-Covered Children Get the Asthma Care They Need
The School-Based Asthma Therapy program at Nationwide Children’s Hospital has been overwhelmingly successful for more than a decade. The basic concept is simple: students who have poorly-controlled asthma receive asthma control medication and education at school.
Students may struggle with a medication routine at home. When they are supported at school, they have a better chance at adherence to that routine. Over and over, that’s shown to be true.
All the way back in 2015, the Nationwide Children’s program reduced asthma-related Emergency Department visits for enrolled students by 50%. Between 2021 and 2024, students enrolled in the program had an almost 36% reduction in Urgent Care visits and a 37% reduction in Emergency Department.
But while the basic concept is simple, the execution of it can be complicated. Students at high risk for asthma exacerbations need to be enrolled in the school-based program to get its benefits. How can those students be identified? How is care coordinated between school and the student’s primary care provider? How can the process be streamlined and not seem like an extra burden for families?
During the 2025-2026 school year, Nationwide Children’s was given the opportunity to address those questions with new funding from the State of Ohio’s Outcomes Acceleration for Kids (OAK) Learning Network. OAK brings together the Ohio Department of Medicaid, Medicaid Managed Care plans and children’s hospitals “to deliver the highest quality care by connecting regional partners to identify opportunities to close health equity gaps for Ohio’s pediatric population, achieve superior outcomes by transforming care delivery to meet patient’s needs and ensure whole child health.”
OAK funding allowed two of Nationwide Children’s most important population health initiatives – Partners For Kids and School Health Services – to improve School-Based Asthma Therapy. And in the process, they enrolled more than 500 new students into the program.
Partners For Kids is one of the country’s oldest and largest pediatric accountable care organizations. Founded by Nationwide Children’s, it is responsible for the health of more than 400,000 children covered by Medicaid Managed Care in Ohio. School Health Services at Nationwide Children’s is one of the United States’ most robust school health programs, keeping thousands of students per year in class by delivering care to them at school.
School Health Services has long worked with school nurses, primary care providers and pharmacists to deliver asthma therapy at school (and to establish better medication routines for families at home). As part of the OAK-funded project, the Disease Management team at Partners For Kids could analyze insurance claims and electronic medical record data to find children with high-risk asthma, who were covered by Medicaid in certain central Ohio geographical areas.
Those disease managers would then work to enroll those students in School-Based Asthma Therapy, and School Health Services could ensure the therapy is delivered.
Over the school year, disease managers found that some tactics worked when approaching families about enrollment. Some didn’t. They learned, for example, that even calling themselves “disease managers” could create a negative impression, and so they began using the phrase “asthma coordinators.” Families who were comfortable with their primary care provider’s approach to asthma care worried that school-based therapy would disrupt that, and the disease managers began emphasizing the ways primary care and school-based therapy worked together.
In all, the “script” disease managers used to talk about School-Based Asthma Therapy changed many times. So did the timing of outreach, the mode of outreach (text messages worked better than calls) and a number of other communication approaches.
Ultimately, however, the combined teams exceeded their goal of 500 newly enrolled students. By the end of the 2025-2026 school year, 1,275 total students were enrolled in central Ohio, including students who had been previously part of the program.
The success of the School-Based Asthma Therapy initiative reflects the power of collaboration across the care continuum, say those involved in the initiative. By partnering with Disease Management teams, primary care providers, nurses and nurse practitioners and families, children receive education on the importance of daily controller medication and reliable access to treatment where they spend most of their week.
This coordinated approach exemplifies population health in action, improving adherence and supporting better outcomes for children with asthma.
Published October 2026
