Asthma management in primary care: caring, sharing and working together.

While historically chronic illnesses have been “stewarded” by different practitioners in different countries [1] with the increasing number of people with chronic illnesses and the ever rising costs of healthcare, the primary care setting is viewed as the long-term custodian of chronic illness management [2–4]. For people with asthma, quality management in primary care is a real, viable and accessible solution to asthma care. This is reflected in guidelines [2, 5, 6], in research trends (as we see pragmatic research sourcing participants in primary care) [7, 8] and it is evidenced in a multitude of primary healthcare initiatives established to support primary care physicians to optimally manage asthma in the community.