I am a mother raising a son with severe asthma. I know what it means to live prepared — carrying inhalers, monitoring symptoms, thinking ahead. But I also know what it means to lose.
As a teenager, I lost my mother to asthma. That loss shaped my life and drives my advocacy, so fewer families experience what mine did.
Recently, I watched an episode of “The Pitt,” an HBO Max medical drama following a real-time ER shift in Pittsburgh.
A boy named Brady arrived struggling to breathe. His oxygen levels were dangerously low. His mother had been doing everything she could, running a home nebulizer every hour because it was all she had left.
The medications that worked for him were gone, not because a doctor changed his treatment, but because Medicaid paperwork went to the wrong address.
At the pharmacy, she learned his prescriptions were no longer covered. The cost $400 a month. So, she stretched what she had until she couldn’t.
Brady nearly died. And as I watched, I didn’t see fiction. I saw reality.
I’ve sat in emergency rooms with my own son, watching his breathing, waiting for relief. I’ve felt that fear.
I’ve also seen the other side. On a trip to Martha’s Vineyard, my son developed bad asthma, and for four days I managed it because I thought to bring a nebulizer machine. More recently, my college freshman had asthma triggered by allergies, and I couldn’t rest until he went to the health clinic and received medication.
This contrast stays with me. It shows how thin the line is between crisis and control and how much it depends on access.
Over the past three years, I served on a task force with AstraZeneca to help bring a new pediatric asthma management tool to market. In rooms filled with physicians and clinical experts, I represented:
• A mother managing son’s severe asthma.
• A daughter who lost her mother to this disease.
• An adult who had childhood asthma.
• A voice for voiceless families.
Because solutions must be grounded in the realities people face every day.
Brady’s story may be fictional, but the system failure is not. Millions of Americans risk losing Medicaid coverage due to administrative issues like missed notices and address mismatches. For families managing asthma, that can mean losing life-saving medications overnight.
In the Black community, where asthma rates are higher and outcomes are worse, these gaps are even more dangerous. This is not just about healthcare. It’s about equity, access, and survival.
At the African American Wellness Project founded by my dad Michael LeNoir. MD, an asthma specialist, we are committed to ensuring families are not navigating this alone. We inform, advocate and educate.
Too many families are one missed prescription, one paperwork error, one gap in coverage away from crisis. This work is personal. It’s for the mother I lost. It’s for the son I’m raising. And it’s for every family who shouldn’t have to fight hard just to breathe
Visit us at https://aawellnessproject.org/.