STAND. COM. REP. NO.  87

 

Honolulu, Hawaii

                , 2023

 

RE:   H.B. No. 1448

      H.D. 1

 

 

 

 

Honorable Scott K. Saiki

Speaker, House of Representatives

Thirty-Second State Legislature

Regular Session of 2023

State of Hawaii

 

Sir:

 

     Your Committee on Education, to which was referred H.B. No. 1448 entitled:

 

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO ASTHMA,"

 

begs leave to report as follows:

 

     The purpose of this measure is to authorize:

 

     (1)  The Department of Education to stock bronchodilators for emergency use during respiratory distress; and

 

     (2)  Department employees to volunteer to administer bronchodilators.

 

     Your Committee received testimony in support of this measure from the American Lung Association, Hawaii Children's Action Network Speaks!, Hawaii Public Health Institute, AlohaCare, Hawaii Public Health Association, Hawaii State Center for Nursing, and six individuals.  Your Committee received comments on this measure from the Department of Education, Department of the Attorney General, Department of Health, and University of Hawaii Nancy Atmospera-Walch School of Nursing.

 

     Your Committee finds that every year, over five thousand people in Hawaii visit emergency rooms due to asthma and another one thousand five hundred are hospitalized.  Infants and very young children make up the majority of asthma-related medical emergencies and hospitalizations.  Although the asthma mortality rate has declined over the past ten years, there was an average of twenty-two deaths per year from asthma in Hawaii between 2013 and 2015.  Your Committee believes that as asthma attacks can occur at any time and often without warning, children with asthma should always have access to medication that can quickly reverse the blockages in their lungs, especially in schools so as to not take children out of the classroom and impede their learning.

 

     Your Committee has amended this measure by:

 

     (1)  Clarifying that schools must follow the Department of Education's protocols, rather than developing their own protocols, regarding the training of employees, maintenance and location of bronchodilators, and immediate and long-term follow up to the administration of medication;

 

     (2)  Specifying that the Department of Education's protocols also apply to Department agents;

 

     (3)  Specifying that schools may, with a valid prescription, accept unused and unexpired bronchodilators, devices, and device components;

 

     (4)  Changing its effective date to June 30, 3000; and

 

     (5)  Making technical, nonsubstantive amendments for the purposes of clarity, consistency, and style.

 

     As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Education that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of H.B. No. 1448, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as H.B. No. 1448, H.D. 1, and be referred to your Committee on Health & Homelessness.

 

 

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Education,

 

 

 

 

____________________________

JUSTIN H. WOODSON, Chair