Burnie has some of the highest asthma hospitalisation rates in Australia, particularly among children under 10 years of age. This makes it a priority site for piloting child-focused preventative initiatives that will improve health outcomes and quality of life for children with asthma. 

We are seeking to do this by leveraging community strengths, fostering collaboration, and promoting sustainable, locally-driven solutions in an Assets Based Community Development framework. 

In a collaboration between Asthma Australia and the Jeder Institute, we want to understand community’s readiness to take action on asthma.  

It builds on a previous Community Consultation and Stakeholder Interview Program as part of the Tasmanian Asthma Discovery Project which as what life is like with asthma in Tasmania. It highlighted that:  

  • People feel they understand their asthma and are managing yet they also tell us they can’t participate in life as fully as they would like. This tells us that there’s a mismatch between what people know about their asthma, what they do to manage it and the best possible health and wellbeing outcomes.  
  • Health and other professionals want more connection with us and shared care of people with asthma with more opportunities for patient education  
  • There is a need to understand communities and their willingness to embrace initiatives aimed at addressing what is a ‘silent’ problem. We need to dig deeper to surface the behavioural levers we need to pull to get traction.  

We are now seeking to answer the question:  

What would make life better for kids with asthma in Burnie? 

The insights gained will help us develop strategies that better support Burnie’s children experiencing asthma and empower communities to achieve healthier and more sustainable outcomes. 
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