How ICBs and GP practices can turn #AskAboutAsthma into year-round action
For ten years, the NHS England #AskAboutAsthma campaign has focused attention on four practical steps that can improve asthma care for children and young people:
- Get an asthma action plan in place.
- Understand how to use inhalers.
- Schedule an asthma review every year and after every attack.
- Consider air quality and its impact on lung health.
These themes apply well beyond the week itself. They describe the foundations of good asthma self-management for children and young people everywhere.
The challenge for ICBs and primary-care teams is turning those four asks into something young people can act on, not only during a consultation or campaign week, but at home, at school and in the middle of the night when their asthma symptoms change.
That is where digital self-management can help.
Asthma is mostly managed between appointments
A young person may spend a few minutes each year discussing their asthma with a healthcare professional. The rest of the time, they and their family are responsible for remembering the advice, following the treatment plan, recognising deterioration and knowing when to ask for help.
Information is often spread between a paper action plan, an inhaler box, a leaflet, a website and whatever the family can recall from their last appointment.
The Digital Health Passport brings those elements together on the young person's phone.
Designed particularly for young people aged 13 to 25 and their parents and carers, DHP can hold their asthma action plan and emergency information, provide inhaler education, send medication reminders, track symptoms and peak flow, surface air-quality information and help them prepare for a review.
In May 2026, NICE recommended DHP as one of seven digital technologies that can be used by the NHS to support asthma self-management while further evidence is generated.
Turning the four asks into everyday action
For the first ask, DHP helps move the asthma action plan from a piece of paper that may be left at home to something available on the young person's phone, alongside their emergency information and trusted support.
For the second, it provides inhaler education and technique videos that can be matched to the person's device. A clinician can demonstrate the technique during a consultation, then give the young person somewhere to revisit it afterwards. Medication reminders can help reinforce the routine agreed with their clinical team.
For the third, tracked symptoms and peak-flow readings can help a young person arrive at their asthma review with a clearer picture of what has happened between appointments. DHP also explains how to prepare for and get more from the conversation.
For the fourth, air-quality and pollen education and location-relevant alerts help young people understand how the environment may affect their asthma.
The app does not replace professional care. It helps the advice and plan agreed with a healthcare professional travel with the young person.
A particularly important question for 2026
This year, every asthma review creates an opportunity for a young person or parent to ask:
"Should I be using a dual-action inhaler?"
The joint BTS, NICE and SIGN guideline introduced important changes to asthma treatment. Depending on age and clinical circumstances, it recommends pathways involving combination inhalers containing an inhaled corticosteroid and formoterol. These can relieve symptoms while also treating the underlying inflammation in the airways.
Clinically, these approaches are known as AIR — anti-inflammatory reliever therapy — and MART — maintenance and reliever therapy. "Dual-action inhaler" is a useful plain-English description of what the medication does.
Nobody should stop or change their prescribed medication without speaking to their clinical team. The role of DHP is not to prescribe. It is to help young people understand why a review matters and equip them to ask whether their current treatment remains the right one.
The technology exists. The challenge is reach.
The young people most at risk of ending up in A&E may also be among those least likely to attend an annual review. They will not all be reached by a poster in a waiting room or a message on an NHS website.
ICBs and primary-care teams need multiple routes into their lives:
- Asthma-review invitations, text recalls and post-attack follow-up.
- GP practices, community pharmacies and specialist clinics.
- A&E and hospital discharge.
- School nursing, SEND teams, schools and colleges.
- Youth services, community organisations and parent networks.
The 2026 campaign encourages services and settings to identify a practical improvement they can make.
For areas where DHP is already commissioned, that improvement could be opening one new route through which young people and families discover and use it.
For ICBs and practices where DHP is not currently commissioned, it could mean exploring how digital self-management might strengthen existing asthma pathways, improve post-attack support or reach young people who are poorly served by conventional approaches.
Five practical actions for primary care
During #AskAboutAsthma and beyond, practices can:
- Raise the dual-action question when a young person relies on a blue inhaler and continues to experience symptoms or attacks.
- Make the personalised action plan available digitally as well as on paper.
- Demonstrate inhaler technique and provide a way to revisit the guidance at home.
- Arrange the post-attack review promptly and encourage the young person to bring information about their symptoms and peak flow.
- Connect with one non-clinical setting — such as a school, youth service or pharmacy — that can reach young people who may not attend routine reviews.
Independent evaluation of DHP by UCL Partners found 96% user satisfaction, an improvement of 2.6 Asthma Control Test points among people with uncontrolled asthma, a 5.5% increase in patient activation and around four fewer days missed from school or work. Around half of users came from the two most deprived IMD quintiles.
The four asks give us a clear framework. Digital tools can help make them accessible wherever and whenever young people manage their asthma.
For ICBs and GP practices, PCNs or Integrated Neighbourhood Teams, the opportunity is not simply to tell more families what good asthma care looks like. It is to give them a practical way to act on it every day.
Clinical note: The Digital Health Passport supports education and self-management and does not replace professional medical advice. Asthma treatment should be reviewed with a qualified healthcare professional. Young people should continue using their prescribed medication unless advised otherwise by their clinical team.