From the President

Dear Colleagues,

I would like to extend my sincere thanks for electing me as your 2015-2016 AAAAI President. For this first message, I want to provide a short background on my life and career and then present to you my presidential initiatives.

My story begins in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where I was born to two wonderful parents: Robert Sr. and Audrey Ann Polakowski. Some of my fondest childhood memories are from my years with the St. Matthias Cadets Drum and Bugle Corps. After graduating from West Allis Nathan Hale High School, I began a 13 year period at the University of Wisconsin (UW) in Madison, graduating with a BS degree in Chemistry in 1971 and an MD degree in 1975. I also did my pediatric residency training at UW before beginning the first part of my allergy and immunology fellowship training. I was mentored by both Bill W. Busse, MD, FAAAAI, and Bob K. Bush, MD, FAAAAI, and the three of us have maintained our friendships throughout the years.

When I completed my fellowship training, Bill told me that the program needed a pediatric allergist to join the faculty and he wanted me to be that person. However, since I had received ALL of my training at UW, he said, and I quote, “You need to get out of here for a while.”

So in 1980, I began a 2 and a half year training period at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under the mentorship of Mike A. Kaliner, MD, FAAAAI, and Dean D. Metcalfe, MD, FAAAAI. My time at the NIH was extremely valuable and I owe a great deal of thanks to Mike and Dean and to all of the people that I worked with during that period. One of those lifetime friends, Tom B. Casale, MD, FAAAAI, has been an incredible source of support both personally and professionally.

Currently, I am Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison, where I am also Head of the Division of Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Rheumatology.

My family has been, and continues to be, an essential support system. I am the oldest child followed 5 years later by my sister, Nancy, and 16 years later by my late brother, Jim. I have two children, Lauren and Peter, who have given me unconditional love and incredible memories. When I thought family life could not get any better, I met my gracious and talented wife, Jane, on a blind date and we were married two years later. She has been very supportive of the demands and challenges I face in my career and I greatly appreciate her being there for me every step of the way.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge all of my UW colleagues who provide me with friendship and an extended feeling of family every day. They are all internationally recognized leaders and have contributed in so many ways to our specialty.

Bringing Asthma Care Back to Our Specialty

Since asthma pathophysiology and treatment have been the central focus of my career, and 2015 is the 20^th anniversary year of the word “Asthma” being added to our organization’s name, I thought it would be both appropriate and timely to focus on asthma for the development of my presidential initiatives.

As a pediatrician, my first initiative is to improve the care of asthmatic children within the school setting by developing methods to improve communication and asthma education among the child, the school nurses, the clinicians, and the families. We are currently developing pilot programs in Madison and surrounding communities to evaluate how these interactions can best be addressed locally, and then lessons learned from these pilot studies will be evaluated for implementation on a national level.

To drive this initiative, I have created the AAAAI Office of School-based Management of Asthma and Allergic/Immunologic Diseases. While its initial focus will be asthma, we will also develop educational tools targeted at school personnel that will help them care for children with food allergies and anaphylaxis.

Our first task is to develop and implement AAAAI-initiated programs to facilitate getting asthma action plans to school nurses and other school personnel responsible for delivering asthma care to grade school children. There are, unfortunately, a number of challenges we will need to address. First, the asthma action plan should ideally be a standardized form that would address diversity in language, culture, and literacy. Second, there should be ease of access and development in various EMRs. Third, methods should be developed that will permit ease of transmission to school nurses and families. And finally, once the asthma action plan is developed, it should be easily modifiable to reflect current medications and overall asthma control status.

The next step will entail conducting a one day summit meeting for professional and lay organizations where we will discuss various issues, such as how to effectively engage the primary care community, and set up strategies to address them. This meeting will include various AAAAI divisions, interest sections, and committees who have an interest or program development for asthma management within schools, and have the desire to work with the newly created Office to network these resources to various communities and constituencies. Various federal, professional, lay, and other groups that have previously developed, or are interested in working on developing, school-based asthma management programs will also be asked to participate.

Step three will be to introduce a new asthma educational program for school-aged children developed by Alex Thomas, MD, called Iggy and the Inhalers. In 1997, Dr. Thomas was the winner of the AAAAI's "How I Live with Managed Asthma" poster contest when he was 16. For the poster, he drew characters he had created when he was 12 for comic strips that he made for a local asthma support group's newsletter. As a fellow in our training program three years ago, Dr. Thomas further developed his comic strip characters into a more comprehensive educational program that consists of videos, comic books, trading cards, and other materials aimed at teaching school-aged children the concepts of rescue and controller inhaler medication.

The final step of my first initiative will be to develop educational materials to guide school personnel on how to effectively manage food allergy and anaphylaxis in schools. To accomplish this, we will revise and update the School Nurse Tool Kit that was developed a number of years ago by the AAAAI and several other groups.

My second overall presidential initiative is to create a stand-alone AAAAI meeting on asthma pathogenesis and treatment that uses the novel approaches to learning that Immediate Past-President James T. Li, MD, PhD, FAAAAI, introduced to our membership. This program is planned for the summer of 2016 and will be separate from the AAAAI Annual Meeting. The content will provide allergy/immunology specialists with the tools they need to be recognized as the experts in the use of biologics and immunoinflammatory modulating agents to treat asthma. The topics addressed will cover the entire life spectrum of asthma including inception and primary prevention, exacerbations, and progression to more severe forms of the disease.

I have heard from various AAAAI colleagues that the care of patients with asthma is being slowly taken over by other physician specialties. Therefore, it is my opinion that it is time to bring asthma care back to the allergists and immunologists, and my initiatives have been designed to enable us to achieve that goal.

Thank you for your support, and I look forward to meeting and collaborating with you as we strive to provide the best care to our patients.

Sincerely,

Robert F. Lemanske, Jr., MD, FAAAAI

AAAAI President

Last updated: August 4, 2015