A particularly important need at this juncture is a mechanism for the rapid evaluation of new and existing therapeutic approaches for asthma and for the dissemination of laboratory and clinical findings to the health care community. The Asthma Clinical Research Network (ACRN) program seeks to accomplish this through the development of a network of interactive asthma clinical groups that conduct clinical studies employing common protocols in a coordinated and multidisciplinary setting. This will ensure ready access to an adequate number of well characterized patients from diverse populations and age groups. It will also bring together and coordinate the necessary clinical expertise and administrative resources to conduct multiple therapeutic studies. Centralized protocols will promote high quality design, decrease the variability in supportive modalities, and reduce the redundant utilization of resources required for rapidly conducting multiple independent clinical studies. The separate data coordinating center supports protocol and questionnaire development, sample size calculations, complete data analysis, and overall study coordination.