Giving Story

Asthma
Of Practical Benefit

Asthma afflicts a rising number of Hartford children. It is one of the leading causes of emergency room visits, hospitalization, and absence from school.

Before she died in 1989, Ethel Donaghue endowed a foundation to sponsor research that would “promote medical knowledge which will be of practical benefit to the preservation, maintenance and improvement of human life.” What could be of more “practical benefit” than improving child health and at the same time reducing health care costs?

In 1998, the Catherine Weldon Donaghue Medical Research Foundation took a giant step toward that goal with a $2.1 million grant to the University of Connecticut Health Center for Easy Breathing, a comprehensive research and treatment program that enlists public and private health care providers in an effort to find and treat asthmatic children in Hartford.

Two years along in the project, 8,000 Hartford children had been tested at six sites around the city. Those with asthma are treated with proper medication and referred to specialists, if needed. They and their families are taught ways to cope with the condition.

The program has developed a detailed diagnosis and treatment plan that is being tested in hopes that it can be used to help young asthma patients across the country breathe more easily.