Anne Kelsey Lamb, MPH
Anne Kelsey Lamb, MPH, is the director of Regional Asthma Management and Prevention (RAMP) and its principal investigator. Serving as director since 2002, Lamb provides strategic guidance in working toward the organization's vision and mission, ensuring a highly effective organization and innovative, successful programs.
With a strong interest in both chronic illness and social inequities, she leads all components of the organization's efforts to reduce the burden of asthma in the San Francisco Bay Area, including: technical assistance to community-based asthma coalitions; the provision of a clearinghouse of information on asthma; convening groups to facilitate networks and capacity building; and creating change through policy advocacy.
Under Lamb's guidance, RAMP has evolved, significantly expanding its breadth, scope and size. In 2007, RAMP was awarded a five-year grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to become a Center of Excellence in the Elimination of Disparities.
Previously, she was a health educator at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Calif. Other previous professional affiliations include: the National Tay-Sachs & Allied Diseases Association, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health Genetics Program and the Prevention Center of Boston. Lamb received a master's degree in public health from the University of Michigan.
Zero Emissions and Community Building: the Next Goals and Strategies of the Moving Forward Network
RAMP is supporting Occidental College’s efforts on its Kresge Foundation funding to launch a 2-year campaign focused on eliminating diesel emissions at ports and in the freight transportation system and to organize a major conference with international participation. RAMP is serving on the project’s Moving Forward Network Advisory Board.
Advancing Support for Prevention Services
This project will increase support for asthma-related prevention services by serving as a link between clinical care and community prevention in California. Asthma best practices will be incorporated into the health home model. Asthma management activities will include advocating for California to implement a rule on reimbursement for CHOWs and supporting development of health impacts bonds to support asthma prevention services.
Asthma Champions Program Services
In collaboration with the University of California, San Francisco, the Regional Asthma Management and Prevention (RAMP) program will provide professional services for the APPPUC 2 Asthma Champions Program. This project provides a partnership in the implementation of an educational outreach program for Bay Area physicians interested in asthma management and prevention.
Asthma Management: Advancing Collaborative Efforts to Improve Land-Use, Transportation & School Health Policies
Through this project, the Regional Asthma Management and Prevention (RAMP) program provides state-level policy leadership to improve environments and public health. RAMP will leverage the structure of the Community Action to Fight Asthma (CAFA) Network to mobilize on-the-ground work in order to influence land use and transportation policies as well as school health.
Asthma Prevention Innovations in Health Care Reform
Regional Asthma Management and Prevention will build on its current advocacy work through a multi-pronged approach to use asthma as a starting point for broader health care financing reform.
Bay Area Community Health Workers & Asthma Management
RAMP supports increased access to culturally-competent quality clinical care, and has long been committed to building the field of Community Health Workers (CHWs). The role of CHWs in asthma management and prevention interventions has been well-documented with robust evidence supporting their impact on improved outcomes and reduced healthcare utilization. Funding will support efforts to shape California policy strategies to include CHWs as key to linking health care finance and community-based prevention, enhance the capacity of Bay Area CHWs focused on asthma to effectively support 750 families, and increase the awareness of CHW-related advocacy opportunities among asthma advocates across California and facilitate their engagement in advocacy activities.
Building Public Health Engagement in Climate Change
This project will: (1) engage the public health community in local and state government efforts to address climate change; (2) develop and implement pilot projects, funded through competitive mini-grants, which demonstrate models for engagement in community climate action; and (3) deliver targeted communications, public policy and advocacy leadership.
Building Systems to Sustain Home-Based Asthma Services
RAMP will serve as a lead technical assistance provider to the National Center for Healthy Housing to guide and support states as they establish and/or grow systems to sustainably deliver home-based asthma services.
Collaboraton with the Bay Area Environmental Health Collaborative
This grant will support the participation by the Regional Asthma Management and Prevention (RAMP) program in the Bay Area Environmental Health Collaborative, a broad partnership among six coalitions and numerous organizations working to protect public health in communities heavily impacted by air pollution.
Comprehensive Approach to Asthma
This funding provides general operating support to reduce asthma disparities through advocacy, policy change, improving clinical care and management, and reducing asthma triggers in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.
Connecting Health and Housing in California
Regional Asthma Management & Prevention (RAMP) will expand its work to utilize housing as a platform for improving health and well-being by building bridges across sectors addressing healthy housing, housing affordability and advancing opportunity.
Creating a Climate for Health
This project's goals are to foster public health sector engagement and partnerships to mitigate climate change and to build community and public health system resilience to adapt to climate change. The project is developing an organizing framework for public health worker engagement; implementing pilot projects that model community climate action; and developing targeted climate communications and advocacy support for the public health sector.
Health Resources in Action
The Regional Asthma Management and Prevention will provide a training for Health Resources in Action.
Healthy Housing and Asthma Coalitions
Funding supports RAMP coalitions: national housing learning collaborative and its efforts to advance healthy housing and California-based Community Action to Fight Asthma Network and its work to reduce environmental asthma triggers.
Incorporating Environmental Management of Asthma into School-Based Health Centers Across the Nation
RAMP aims to reduce indoor environmental asthma triggers by: collecting and disseminating best practices nationally, developing key tools tailored to use by School Based Health Centers (SBHCs); designing and conducting national and state trainings; and convening and supporting a national learning collaborative to stimulate and support local action at SBHCs across the nation.
National REACH Coalition partnership
RAMP, in partnership with the National REACH Coalition, will develop and implement a Community Transformation Plan using evidence-based and practice-based strategies to reduce or eliminate racial or ethnic health disparities in chronic disease risk factors and outcomes. Strategies will be tied to proper nutrition and physical activity outcome measures and include implementing, maintaining, and/or strengthening policy, systems, or environmental improvements.
Promoting Healthy Housing and Freight Transportation in California
In order to expand the impact of our healthy housing work beyond California, RAMP and the California Health Housing Coalition (CHHC) will build a growing community of organizations and agencies across several states with experience or interest in state policy approaches to healthy housing. We will support these states in pursuing state policy action through: exposure to lessons and tools developed by CHHC; engagement in peer learning discussions; opportunities to educate their state legislators; and connections with experts and tools from other organizations.
Public Policy Efforts to Address Asthma and Other Air Pollution Related Health Issues
RAMP will: 1) continue efforts to promote health and equity through public policy campaigns related to outdoor air quality and/or the built environment; 2) sustain RAMP’s clearinghouse role, reaching a broad network with asthma research, promising practices, events, and policies; and 3) support local asthma coalitions and/or other public health or environmental justice programs to engage in public policy related to environmental asthma triggers.
RAMP Training for HRiA
RAMP will provide a training for Health Resources in Action.
RAMP Web Development Related Expenses for the California Healthy Housing Coalition
RAMP developed and beta tested a website and web-based communications tools for the California Healthy Housing Coalition.
RAMP's Advocacy to Support Prevention
RAMP has a strong history as a leader in approaching asthma management through a broad, upstream understanding of prevention. With an evolving health care system that offers new opportunities for financing prevention, RAMP has applied our existing knowledge and experiences with prevention to our developing capacity in the field of health care finance and policy. We dived deep into understanding how prevention may fit into various health care financing opportunities and developed a broad-based collaborative approach to advocating for changes. Over the coming year, we will advance these policy opportunities while continuing to disseminate information to the broader field to ensure a broader uptake in organizational and policy best-practices.
RAMP: Advocating to Create Healthy Environments
RAMP proposes to build on past successes in pursuing new and improved efforts related to the built environment and school environments. RAMP has a long and strong history of successfully influencing policy at the regional and state levels as well as providing technical assistance and training for asthma coalitions and a broad array of advocates in the fields of public health and environmental justice.
REACH Center of Excellence
RAMP serves as the only asthma-related Center of Excellence in the Elimination of Disparities as part of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's REACH US program. RAMP focuses on diesel pollution, housing quality, land use and transportation policies, school and child care interventions, and clinical management.
Reducing Asthma Disparities through Comprehensive Community Action
As a CDC Center for Excellence in Eliminating Disparities (CEED) in asthma, the Regional Asthma Management and Prevention (RAMP) program uses a socio-ecological approach to work to reduce asthma disparities in African American and Latino populations. In this project, RAMP aims to reduce environmental triggers in homes, schools, and in the outdoor air, and to improve culturally competent clinical management.
Rules of the Road: How to Engage Public Agencies in Land Use, Transportation and Air Quality Decisions to Promote Equity and Public Health
One barrier to meaningful community involvement in land use and transportation issues related to public health and equity concerns is a lack of knowledge about how various agencies make decisions and how the public can influence the process. This project will help bridge that engagement gap by providing trainings and follow-up technical assistance to under-represented communities.
Sponsorship of California Healthy Coalition’s Annual Meeting
Sponsorship of RAMP’s California Healthy Coalition’s annual meeting.
Supporting healthy and educated kids by reducing asthma inequities through policy and systems change
RAMP is planning to advance advocacy efforts to increase access to services aimed and at preventing/reducing asthma and other housing illness and share such efforts as a model.