Representative Eliot Engel: Fighting the Good Fight
Rep. Eliot Engel knows a few things about sneezing and wheezing. Each August, as the heat baked the city streets of the Bronx, NY, neighborhood where he grew up, his hay fever symptoms let loose. Now 54 and serving his seventh term in Congress, Engel still dreads the late summer months that trigger his annual hay fever.

But it wasn’t his own sneezing that first motivated him to join in the fight against asthma. His true inspiration came from watching his wife and two sons struggle to breathe as they dealt with asthma each day.

"When my wife, Pat, was a little girl, the doctors told her she had weak bronchial tubes," Engel says. "They didn’t diagnose her coughing and wheezing as asthma because back then, they didn’t know as much about the disease. In fact, she wasn’t officially diagnosed with asthma until after the birth of our first child, even though she’d had symptoms for years."

Their two boys, Jonathan, 14, and Philip, 7, were each diagnosed with asthma at age 4 thanks to Pat’s watchful eye. "She heard Jonathan coughing and realized he sounded just like she had when she was a child with undiagnosed asthma," Engel recalls. "We didn’t want either of our boys to go untreated, so when they began to show some of the typical asthma symptoms, we got them to a doctor."

Pat and the two boys have their asthma under control with medications and careful monitoring, but the Engels still have their share of asthma adventures. On a vacation to Florida, they absent-mindedly left the nebulizer at home, and had to have a friend overnight it to their hotel!

Back home in his native Bronx, Engel and his family aren’t the only ones with asthma on their minds. His congressional district has one of the highest incidences of asthma in the United States. While only 15 percent of children nationwide have asthma, 25 percent of children living in the Bronx have it. And asthma-related hospitalizations in the Bronx are 10 times higher than the national average. Why? No one is sure.

Whatever the reason, Engel is committed to reducing the numbers and making the Bronx a healthier place to breathe. Thanks to his own experience, he understands what families go through each day when a loved one has asthma. "An effective legislator should have the ability to relate to his district from personal experience," he says. "Asthma hits home for me personally and for my constituents."

In Congress, Engel is working on legislation to increase funding for asthma research at the National Institutes of Health and hopes to expand the Children’s Health Insurance program so all children - no matter what their financial status - will have access to asthma care. "Kids need access to preventive, ongoing asthma treatments," he urges. "Asthma can kill and those who only receive sporadic care are the ones most at risk."

Inspired by Asthma Awareness Day on Capitol Hill, an event sponsored by Allergy & Asthma Network Mothers of Asthmatics (AANMA) in May, Engel plans to hold his own Asthma Awareness Day in New York to get the word out and educate his constituents.

"One of the most important things we can do is work to raise people’s consciousness about asthma," says Engel. "Many people think that if you’re not outwardly choking and gasping, you’re fine. But we know that even quiet, underlying symptoms need to be treated."

Boldly leading the charge in the fight against asthma, Kennedy, DeWine, and Engel have courageously overcome their own struggles to stand up for your right to breathe. Are your congressional representatives working to improve your quality of life through new treatments, better education, and cleaner air? Are they fighting for your needs on Capitol Hill? Write, call, or e-mail them and let them know that asthma matters to you!

Reprinted from Allergy & Asthma Health magazine, Fall 2001.