- [Voiceover] Chasing the Dream: Poverty and Opportunity

in America is an ongoing public media reporting initiative.

- So I am in a household of people suffering from asthma,

my husband has had asthma, and now my two boys.

- Asthma, by itself, is a chronic inflammatory

disease of the lungs, of the airways.

Whenever we breathe in something, we breath in pollen,

we breathe in dust, smoke, and those causes inflammation

as it goes down the airways to the lungs.

And when the airway is obstructed, the natural

resistance of airflow is distorted.

So therefore, one develops asthma.

- Being in a household of three asthmatics

is, number one, knowing each one of their triggers.

Because they're all different.

So my husband, he can be more affected by,

the season allergies can really trigger him

into asthmatic attacks.

My 13-year-old, his triggers are more the winter months,

when the mold spores are high.

- Asthma by itself can lessen one's lifespan

if it's not treated and prevented in an effective manner.

Asthma rates in the 93706 zip code are extremely high,

due to health disparity, proximity to freeways,

proximity to industrial areas, as well as

proximity to open land, fields full of dust.

- (speaks in Spanish)

- So it's very frustrating, it's really sometimes angering

to see that it's so common for people to have asthma,

that this commonality of, "Oh, yeah, it's just asthma."

It's like, no, it's not just asthma.

If your asthma attack is out of control,

you will die. Nothing else matters if you can't breathe.

- (speaks in Spanish)

- The 93706 number of persistence of asthma

among children is one in four.

It's very difficult, I mean, to actually bring their

lung specialist and doctors, and form those

rural health care centers, and for that,

we need somebody to look into that,

and so we can form rural health care centers

who can give more care to that zip code and prevent this.

- The Central California Asthma Collaborative

is a non-profit that was established to fill a gap

that exists in the community

between the primary care provider or specialist's office

and people at home who have asthma.

93706 is one of the difficult and challenged zip codes

in the San Joaquin Valley.

We work with that community and with residents

in that community by identifying families

who have children with asthma, and adults who have asthma,

and offering them the opportunity to have

a community health worker come to their home,

do an in-home evaluation, and provide them

with some resources that are already available

in the community, but again, because of the difficulty

they have in accessing these resources,

or even knowing that they're around,

through connecting them to already existing resources,

they can improve both the asthma situation

and their lives in general.

- (Speaks in Spanish)

- This is great work. You can really feel good

when you walk away from somebody's home,

that you've improved their lives at that point.

- [Voiceover] Funding for Chasing the Dream

is provided by The JPB Foundation and Ford Foundation.