The CONNECT Collaborator Series is an interview series where we host conversations with healthcare professionals and partners with the goal of encouraging deeper collaboration in the healthcare industry.
Watch Part 1 of the CONNECT Collaborator Series video featuring our Co-Founder, Lorie Spence and President & CEO of Asthma Canada, Jeffrey Beach.
Lorie Spence: Welcome to the CONNECT Collaborator Interview Series, where we host 10-minute conversations with healthcare professionals and partners with the goal of encouraging deeper collaboration in the healthcare industry.
Today’s guest is Jeffrey Beach, President & CEO of Asthma Canada. With over 25 years of leadership in the Canadian non-profit sector, Jeff has dedicated his career to empowering individuals facing health and social challenges. He has held executive roles at organizations like the Canadian Spondyloarthritis Association, Cystic Fibrosis Canada, and The Arthritis Society. Jeff is also an active volunteer, serving on boards such as the Women’s Brain Health Initiative and the Health Charities Coalition of Canada. Welcome Jeff and thank you for joining us!
Jeffrey Beach: Thank you, Lorie. I appreciate you inviting me to be here, and it’s a pleasure to be here.
Lorie Spence: Excellent. We can start with you telling us a little bit about Asthma Canada’s mission that’s built on these three pillars of education, advocacy and research. Could you walk us through these pillars and guide us through the organization’s efforts to support these?
Jeffrey Beach: Well, first of all, Asthma Canada is a registered nonprofit charitable organization. We’re the only organization of this nature in the country that is solely focused on asthma and respiratory allergies and helping people with asthma and respiratory allergies lead better lives and find the information and support that they need in order to be able to do that. We’re actually celebrating our 50th anniversary this year in 2024 as the patient organization that’s dedicated to asthma. So we’re very proud of that milestone.
And as you mentioned, we do have three mission pillars in terms of the work that we do. The first one that I’ll touch on is education. We are a credible source of evidence-based information for people who have any questions or concerns about asthma. Oftentimes that would be someone who’s newly diagnosed, a parent, perhaps of child that’s been recently diagnosed with asthma. Anyone looking for that credible source of information as there’s a plethora of information out there through Dr Google that can can really sometimes mislead people down different paths. And so we like to think of ourselves as the go to source of that information. We have science-based information that we provide. We are overseen by a board of directors that includes a medical and scientific advisory committee. We have experts that weigh in and help us to craft and create the educational resources that we offer that includes our website, asthma.ca. We also offer a number of different webinars and discussions, online—social media discussions and topics—around educational needs of people living with asthma. We also offer a helpline that is a free service. It’s staffed by certified respiratory educators (CREs) and it’s available free of charge to any Canadians in English and in French who have questions about asthma and respiratory allergy. That could be questions ranging to from how to speak with a doctor about your condition, perhaps somebody who thinks they might have asthma but are not diagnosed, it’s really open ended, and the certified respiratory educators that are part of our team are happy to speak with anyone who’s looking for that type of information, either through a phone call or through email as well.
I’ll move over to our second mission pillar, which is advocacy. Our focus around advocacy is primarily ensuring that people with asthma, patients and caregivers, people who are affected by asthma, have the equitable access to the information, the support, the treatment and the care that they need. For example, if a new treatment, a new drug therapy, is coming into Canada, we will advocate on behalf of the community to make sure that that treatment option actually becomes available in an equitable way for people living with asthma. We also do some advocacy work around ensuring that people have access to the care that they need. We know that accessing healthcare resources can be extremely challenging. There’s a high percentage of people that don’t have a family physician or a family health team that they belong to, so we try to connect them and make sure that they find the resources that they need. We also advocate at the systems level to make sure that asthma resources are available, like certified respiratory educators, for example, who we believe really should be embedded in primary care. We also do some advocacy on the on the environmental side of things—looking at supporting clean energy initiatives. Clean air is important, of course, to all of us, but particularly for people who have asthma and other lung health conditions. We want to make sure that the environment is supporting them as much as possible. We’ve been instrumental in issues like for example, about 10 years ago in Ontario, when there was still coal generated electricity across the province, we were one of the groups that really helped to highlight the health impact of that type of energy production and the shift to clean energy and what that could mean. So now, in Ontario and in Alberta and other provinces, they have either completely or are now phasing out coal as a form of generating electricity, which has made a huge impact on the air quality across the country.
And then finally, our final pillar is research. We are both a funder of research—we have research grants that we offer to students and investigators at different stages of their career—and we also are directly involved in research as a connector, connecting the patient community to clinical trials and other types of research projects that they might be involved with and might be interested in. We’re actively participating and sometimes authors in research studies as well. For example, we’re wrapping up some work that we’ve been doing over the last couple of years on patient treatment preferences for biologics. Biologic treatments are usually used as add on therapies for especially severe asthma, but we’re trying to investigate and understand what patients really want from them. What are the most important values? Is it out of pocket costs. if there’s not sufficient coverage? Is it the way that these drugs are administered? Is it the frequency of administration? Things like that and really helping to weigh what those preferences are, so that policy decision makers, as well as prescribers and clinicians can really understand what patients are looking for in those types of options.
Lorie Spence: That sounds all fantastic, and congratulations on 50 years with the organization in Canada. You mentioned a couple things—resources that you’re doing with the CRE support and things like that. Can you speak to how Asthma Canada supports healthcare providers, empowers patients, and some recent initiatives or successes you’d like to highlight?
Jeffrey Beach: So we are an organization that really is focused on empowering patients, and in order to do that, their healthcare providers are an important part of that team in doing so. As I mentioned, we are a source of credible and reliable information. For example, one of the things that we provide free of charge are asthma action plan templates. So every asthma patient should have an asthma action plan that lays out what their triggers are, what to do in case of an exacerbation or an attack and so forth, and that should be done in concert with the healthcare providers. Everything we do is free of charge as a nonprofit organization, so healthcare providers can feel confident in referring their patients to us, and I think, most importantly, we are there as a source of empowerment for the patients. When you have time in front of a specialist that you’re seeing, maybe for the first time or on a repeat visit, helping organize your thoughts and really documenting your asthma action plan and how you’re doing, and maybe getting people to think about some of the symptoms and things that unfortunately get normalized in asthma is helpful.
Asthma is a disease that’s often downplayed and normalized. People think they’re in control, when in actuality they’re not. The asthma is not controlled from a clinical definition standpoint. So being able to go into your doctor and say, “Look, I have these flags. I’m using my rescue inhaler multiple times a week. I’m waking up at night with symptoms,” recognizing what those flags are, and then being able to take those to the healthcare provider to discuss them and look at what treatment options might be available or perhaps how the medication is being administered now—which sometimes is not. People think they’re using their inhalers properly, but they’re not. So we’re really trying to empower people with that and work in partnership with their healthcare providers to give them that information they need in order to be properly treated.
When it comes to new, innovative programs, we still provide the basic information and resources about asthma, but we’re also looking at the disease holistically, because asthma does have a lot of comorbidities. Many people with asthma have nasal polyps, other conditions, inflammatory health, conditions that can be related to asthma as well, even things like mental health. Asthma is a disease that does take a toll on people’s mental health. Especially when it comes to younger patients, there are still stigmas about asthma patients. Maybe they are embarrassed to use their inhaler, their medication when they need to. And so we are looking at how we can support people with those comorbidities, with the mental health aspects and other related conditions, and offering information about those.
We’ve actually just launched a new program to help generate more awareness and uptake in the asthma community on vaccines. Vaccinations really need to be part of a an overall asthma management plan. We know that preventable illnesses like flu, RSV and so forth, are contributors to asthma in terms of exacerbating symptoms, so the more that people can understand and avail themselves of vaccines that are available to help with those preventable illnesses, the better their health outcomes will be. We’re launching some new initiatives with the help of the Public Health Agency of Canada to help people understand because people have, rightfully so, questions about vaccines, and they want to know what’s available to them and why they’re important, and are they safe. We’re trying to make sure that we equip asthma patients with as much information as they can to make informed choices about their options.
Lorie Spence: Excellent. Thank you again for joining us, and we really look forward to following where Asthma Canada continues to evolve and expand as well as you on your journey.
Jeffrey Beach: Thank you so much for giving us this opportunity and helping us leverage our profile and make sure that people know that we’re there and we’re here to help you.
Thank you for reading part 1 of this interview. Visit our blog in January for part 2 of this interview with Lorie Spence, Co-Founder of Bridge Medical Communications, and Jeffrey Beach, President and CEO of Asthma Canada.
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