BELLAIRE • MEMORIAL • RIVER OAKS • TANGLEWOOD • WEST UNIVERSITY

A brother’s mission to combat asthma

By Veer Garg, age 16 | November 27, 2024

Click the Buzz Me button to receive email notifications when this writer publishes a new article or a new article in this column is published.

BREATHE EASY Veer Garg, a senior at The Village School, learned about the difficulty of asthma when his sister was diagnosed with the condition in college. Since then, he has founded an organization that advocates for schools to keep inhalers stocked.

A call from 1,700 miles away awaits me – my sister. After an unexpected visit to her college doctor’s office, my sister’s spontaneous inability to breathe was the hottest topic of my once-quiet household. I, accompanied by my incomplete family, sat apprehensively at the dining table. After waiting, we had an answer.

“I have asthma,” my sister uttered. “Asthma? The elementary-school playground myth?” I blurted. “That’s why you couldn’t breathe?” Naturally, I suspected my sister was overreacting, but I quickly discovered that as elementary-school me grew up, so did asthma.

This one-time occurrence became commonplace, affecting my sister’s ability to learn, grow, and socialize in her new college environment, which drove me to find a solution. I learned asthma had a partner – climate change. I felt compelled not to let the two damage others as they had my sister.

To understand climate change’s impact on asthma, I worked with the Noida Institute for Engineering to model increases in Houston pollen over time, contributing to three publications. That research shows that Texas will observe heavy climate impacts on air quality, leading to measurable surges in asthma. In Texas, over 350,000 students have asthma but are without access to asthma medication during school. Every year, 300 children in the US alone die because of asthma. Seeing these numbers, ensuring that children of the future could access emergency respiratory medication became my new goal.

It was for this reason that I started my organization No Child Left Breathless (NCLB). NCLB aims to fight this issue by making sure that schools always have inhalers stocked for emergency use. We have already convinced schools in Houston, California, and New York to stock inhalers to prevent life-threatening student respiratory crises. With a partnership with Citizens Climate Lobby, NCLB won’t stop until all Texas schools have inhalers. At one of their recent events, we campaigned to Texas citizens about the issue of asthma in schools. NCLB has enabled me to touch my community directly – mobilizing real, tangible change in the form of an inhaler.

Want to be a Buzz Kid? Email approximately 350 words, a high-resolution photo and caption to [email protected]. Or mail it to The Buzz Magazines, 5001 Bissonnet, Suite 100, Bellaire, Texas 77401.