About Us

The American Asthma Foundation (AAF) is the only national advocacy group devoted solely to asthma, a chronic condition affecting 23 million Americans. AAF’s mission is to improve treatment, prevent, and find a cure for the disease.

In order to achieve these goals, the Foundation fosters highly innovative, cutting-edge research through the AAF’s Research Program (AAFRP), a national grants program designed to recruit outstanding investigators not previously involved in asthma research. Generous grants reward “thinking outside the box,” bringing new perspectives to diseases of the lung.

The AAFRP has succeeded in attracting outstanding researchers in the United States and Internationally from a wide range of fields and disciplines, including biology, epidemiology, immunology, medicine, pathology, pharmacology, physiology, chemistry, and neurology. We have recently added Australia, Ireland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, in our search for excellence.

Overseeing this grants program is a distinguished Scientific Advisory Board from leading universities both in the United States and, more recently, a member from Great Britain. These preeminent academicians engage in a review of grant applications to ensure they meet our rigorous criteria for outstanding science, together with innovative, cutting-edge, creative thinking. The success of the AAF’s Research Program has indeed been gratifying.

It is clear that the approach used by the American Asthma Foundation to confront the disease is unusual, as well as innovative. We know of no other model among disease-oriented foundations that casts such a wide net to attract the best and brightest scientists, wherever they can be found.