Taylor Hadlock has been living with an inhaler in her pocket for the past 11 years. She always has to be prepared for an asthma attack.

“It’s just scary, if you don’t have your inhaler and you don’t know what to do,” the 15-year-old said. “As a little kid especially you get really scared and then it makes it worse. You get worked up.”

Hadlock was crowned Uintah County Miss Outstanding Teen this summer, and because of her platform — Living with Asthma — she attended a recent town hall meeting in Vernal to find out more about the condition in the Uintah Basin.

Doctors, researchers and officials with the TriCounty Health Department gathered in a conference room at the health department offices Aug. 24 to discuss what should be added to the five-year plan for Utah’s Asthma Task Force. Kara Glaubitz, a research associate with the Center for Public Policy and Administration at the University of Utah, was on hand as a moderator and to take notes to return to Salt Lake City.

Some of the ideas included education for parents, young children and school teachers; air quality research; analyzing the Uintah Basin’s transitioning population; preparing information for easier distribution; more public meetings; and more communication among health specialists.

TriCounty Health Director Joseph B. Shaffer said he was born with asthma and knows it inside and out. It has never held him back, he said. Shaffer said he’s participated activities ranging from the military special forces to scuba diving, all things most people wouldn’t suggest for someone who has asthma.

Shaffer agreed with others at the meeting that more information needs to be given to the public, considering the tri-county area has significantly higher hospitalizations for asthma for all age groups compared to other areas in Utah.

More than half of adults in the Uintah Basin who have ever been diagnosed with asthma were diagnosed by age 10, and two-thirds by age 17, according to the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.

One of the biggest issues for many years was the ban on inhalers at schools, Shaffer said. After working for about a decade, the state law was changed to allow a student to carry an inhaler into the classroom, he said.

“There’s so much mystery, and what we need to do is break that mystery,” Shaffer said.

Dr. Daniel J. Kwak of Dinosaurland Pediatrics said he’s has been working with school nurses in the area and wants to create an asthma action program “to help families and patients become more uniform in the way that we treat it, more uniform in the way we test for it and education to help the families realize that the way to treat asthma affected children is not limit their activities.”

Ideally the program would extend through different doctors offices, schools and families, Kwak said.

He also suggested the community rally together to help treat those with asthma the same as it would those with diabetes or eyeglasses.

Hadlock also wants to teach other kids that they don’t need to be scared to tell others they have asthma.

“Just let people know and I think they’ll be more caring than you think,” she said.

Hadlock knows what that’s like to have a panic attack when she realizes she’s lost her inhaler. It’s happened on several occasions and led to an asthma attack.

Once when she was 6 years old and on a hike with her family, she lost her inhaler. She was already allergic to everything around her. Her eyes swelled shut from allergies and her throat was closing off, making it so she couldn’t breathe. Her family took her to the hospital where she was able to recover.

Because of situations like this at a young age, Hadlock thought she would be limited in the activities she could take part in.

“I didn’t think I could do sports like all the other kids and I didn’t think that I could do everything,” she said. “But now, seeing that you can get rid of it going to the doctor, it’s not as bad.”

Hadlock has learned from visits with Kwak that a daily routine of a pill, a puff from a special inhaler and nasal spray make it so her asthma is manageable and she can participate in sports.

She wants to teach kids that they can do whatever they want to do in life even if they have asthma.

“It’s invasive in your life because you have to remember to take the pill everyday,” Hadlock said. “But looking at the long run, it’s a lot better to take a pill a day and not have asthma than to not be able to play sports or hang out with friends because of your asthma.”

The teenager plays on an all-star softball team as catcher, a very cardio-intense position for the sport, as well as basketball and soccer. Because she’s been open about her asthma with her teammates and classmates she’s realized other people also have asthma and they can help her.

Hadlock said one time during a one-mile run at school she had an asthma attack. Since she had previously told her classmates about her condition they already knew the combination to her locker to retrieve her spare inhaler.

“If they wouldn’t have known I don’t think that I would’ve been able to tell anybody, because it gets so bad that all you can do is focus on breathing,” she said.

During her year in service as Uintah County royalty, Hadlock hopes to hold assemblies in schools to spread the word. She also wants to celebrate a day of asthma awareness in May, and hold a balloon release.

“Even if I could just change one person, it would be a big accomplishment knowing I helped,” she said.