Narrator:        This is Science Today. If you or a loved one suffers from asthma, spending as little as thirty minutes with a health care professional to develop a personalized self-management plan, may greatly improve disease control and drug adherence. Clinical pulmonary specialist, Susan Janson of the University of California, San Francisco, says their findings are significant considering how poorly controlled asthma is among many individuals.

Janson:           More than twenty million people in the United States have asthma and over the last five to six years, we've been able to lower the death rate to about five thousand a year to about thirty-five hundred. So, that's good but in reality no one should die from asthma, it's a treatable disease. So, it shouldn't happen - the disease is completely controllable with the right approach.

Narrator:        Janson says many asthma patients don't use their inhalers correctly, so she encourages simple point-of-care evaluation, assessment and teaching - even at the pharmacy.

Janson:           Everyone goes there and stands in line for quite a long time to get their medicine renewed and pharmacists are well-trained.