Researchers and doctors are beginning to modernize asthma treatment using innovative therapies.
Asthma is a common, chronic and treatable lung disease that touches nearly every family in America. It affects people of all ages and costs our health care system about US$82 billion each year.
In Michigan, the problem is acute. About 12% of Michigan adults live with asthma, compared to almost 9% nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nowhere is the burden heavier than in Detroit, which is ranked No. 1 in the U.S. as the most challenging place to live with asthma – based on prevalence, emergency department visits and deaths.
Between 2021 and 2023, the city’s adult asthma rate was 14.8%, compared with 11.5% statewide, according to data from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. Childhood asthma reaches nearly 15%, almost double the state average.
Between 2019 and 2023, Detroiters were hospitalized for asthma more often than residents elsewhere in the state. Black residents, women and people with lower incomes bear the greatest burden, facing higher rates of disease and worse outcomes, such as hospitalization.
Personalized care based on medical advances
My experience as an asthma specialist has taught me humility in the face of this complex disease. Over the past decade, I’ve learned the value of pausing and inviting each patient to reflect on their own journey with asthma.
For some, it is a new and confusing diagnosis – often accompanied by a degree of denial about having a chronic condition that needs constant management.
For others, this process gives them space to reflect on disease-related harms such as lifetime exposure to corticosteroids, which treat inflammation, or the number of emergency department visits they have endured.
Taking time to reflect also gives doctors and patients an opportunity to think about other issues affecting the patients’ health. For example, patients often struggle with the relationship between asthma and being overweight. It is hard for them to lose weight due to their symptoms or the side effects of oral steroids.
This mutual understanding becomes the foundation for a personalized care plan, often using the latest scientific advances in therapy. My colleagues and I at the University of Michigan are deeply involved in clinical trials investigating novel therapies and forward-thinking approaches to asthma care.
These approaches are centered in the long-held principle that a preventive and proactive approach to care is better than a reactive one.
In 2025, Detroit was named the most challenging place in the U.S. for people with asthma.
Nick Hagen/The Washington Post via Getty Images
The problem with ‘wait-and-see’ care
Decades of research show that asthma, while characterized by airway inflammation and spasming, is a heterogenous syndrome. This means it takes many forms and affects patients…
