GiveBetter x California

Breathe Southern California

Asthma support, lung-health education and clean-air advocacy

Research time: 12 min on GPT-6 Astra Light
  • Research — reviewed programs, finances and impact evidence.

Updated: 2026-09-14

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Summary

What do they do? Breathe Southern California combines asthma support with education, equipment and air-quality advocacy. BEAM serves eligible residents of Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, both within California. The estimate prices only the BEAM health component at full recipient cost; other portfolio health remains unpriced.

Why we’re interested in this organization:

  • A current insured asthma pathway and original accounts establish real operations and recipient-scale costs.

  • Home-asthma randomized evidence supplies a finite symptom-day bridge instead of equating visits with health.

  • Named LA purifier distribution locations and public-agency response documents make geography and substitution questions concrete.

Our main reservations:

  • Insurer-covered asthma and a separate public purifier program may replace services credited to private gifts.

  • The priced BEAM pathway omits potentially important purifier and policy effects, so it is not a complete portfolio ranking.

  • Annual marginal patients, county mix, effective purifier use and health-relevant exposure reductions are unknown; past matching claims are not current offers.

What do you get for your dollar? $214.1M per better life: ten additional quality-adjusted life years in California. Judgment BEAM asthma-pathway QALYs at full recipient cost; purifier and policy health unpriced..

100 annual course opportunities is a judgment, not observed run-rate. After b=.25,25 additional California reference courses; each yields .005461165049 discounted QALYs under the subjective clinical bridge, total .136529126214. Other portfolio outcomes unpriced.

1. What do they do?

Breathe Southern California, EIN 95-1641451, is distinct from similarly named Northern California organizations. The current BEAM eligibility requires residence in Los Angeles or San Bernardino County. Both are inside the California edition. Accordingly, g_CA=1 applies to the modeled eligible BEAM branch, conditional on eligibility being followed; it is not the whole portfolio's geographic share. The current homepage reports 300-plus BEAM patients during 2024–2026, not annual or gift-induced throughput.

The recipient also operates purifier response, education and policy work. Those pathways may matter substantially but require separate exposure and implementation models; devices, maps and workshop counts are not QALYs.

2. Monitoring and information sharing

A randomized King County study of 373 Medicaid-enrolled children found an additional 2.10 symptom-free days per two weeks (95% CI 1.17–3.05) and 1.31 fewer urgent-care events over 12 months. Its structured multi-contact intervention differs from a visit with optional follow-up. Outcomes included self-report, and caregiver questionnaire points are not preference-based QALYs. Randomized Medicaid childhood-asthma home-visit outcomes and costs

The adult HomeBASE trial similarly improved symptom-free days and asthma-related quality of life but did not improve unscheduled health-care use. This supports a morbidity pathway while cautioning against automatically assigning hospitalization savings or childhood effects to every adult. HomeBASE randomized adult asthma trial

For BEAM, request unique-patient baseline severity, completed visits and supplies, symptom days or validated utility at follow-up, hospital claims, retention and alternative-provider availability. Compare against contemporaneous usual care and avoid selecting only high-utilization patients at a temporary peak. The public workshop page describes instruction, not controlled follow-up demonstrating fewer exacerbations. Lung Power education workshops

3. Qualitative assessment

The clinical and environmental pathways are plausible, but their marginal funding mechanisms differ. A new gift might support navigation for otherwise unserved patients, effective filter use or people outside a public program's footprint. That hypothesis needs a costed queue and comparison against services already available.

The public Palos response distinguishes the June smoke episode from ongoing cleanup monitoring and odors. It reports up to $5 million additional purifier funding, direct shipment and three years of replacement filters for eligible residents. This is an alternative-provider counterfactual—not funding received by Breathe. It makes gross distribution counts a particularly weak proxy for private-donation impact.

The organization's LinkedIn account reports thousands of purifiers and a matching appeal ending September 4; the exact post date and subsequent fulfillment are unverified. That deadline has passed, so no active match or remaining donor gap is assumed. AAFA's partner account documents an order of 300 upgraded Rabbit Air units, not that the entire shipment was donated. The policy portfolio needs its own finite exposure and coalition-attribution model.

4. What do you get for your dollar?

The conditional BEAM estimate is $214.15 million per 10 California QALYs, charging $2,923,727 full recipient FY2025 expense. It is partial health, not a whole-portfolio expected return. The model posits 100 annual courses, 25% funding responsiveness, half the external trial symptom-day effect, 75% within-year timing and 0.10 utility per additional symptom-free day. At one year and 3% discount it yields 0.136529 California QALYs. All eligibility counties are in California; no observed geographic population weighting is claimed.

The current cumulative count does not establish annual throughput or a funding gap. The clinical bridge gives .005461165049 QALY per additional course, with no mortality, permanent cure or duplicate hospitalization effect. Joint positive scenarios, zero and adverse stress retain uncertainty. Original FY2023–25 returns have now been reopened in the shared LA evidence and no separately netted direct costs were identified; the three comparable expense amounts remain $2,075,948, $2,305,383 and $2,923,727. Outside medical, insurer and partner resources are separate societal costs.

Model, assumptions and sensitivity

Ordinary gift/full recipient annual cost normalization, not a restricted BEAM or emergency-purifier gift. Latest annual cost is historical and predates 2026 response; insurer/public resources not subtracted.

Both named BEAM eligibility counties are in California; g_CA=1 conditional on compliance. A .95 sensitivity allows eligibility/movement leakage. This is independently scoped, not a copy of the LA model's .5 county-share judgment.

QCA=(D/C)*N*b*(deltaSFD14/14)*deltaU*r*w*T*gCA/(1+d); C=2923727,N=100,b=.25,deltaSFD14=2.1,deltaU=.1,r=.5,w=.75,T=1,gCA=1,d=.03. Price10=10*D/QCA. Purifier and policy health unpriced; no automatic portfolio uplift.

C
2923727 USD annual recipient expenses (observed). FY 2025 original accrual return; predates 2026 response. [990-25]
N
100 annual BEAM courses, diagnostic (judgment). 300-plus cumulative patients over 2024–2026 divided by three calendar-year labels; not an observed annual run-rate. [home]
b
0.25 marginal funding responsiveness (judgment). Possible navigation/capacity margin after payer/provider substitution; no verified gap. [beam] [chw]
g
1 California share of eligible BEAM benefit (judgment). Both Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties are in California. Conditional on residence eligibility; .95–1 test, not all-portfolio attribution. [beam]
deltaSFD14
2.1 symptom-free days per fortnight (observed). External childhood RCT benchmark; not BEAM. [rct]
deltaU
0.1 utility difference on extra symptom-free day (judgment). Preference-weight bridge not measured for BEAM.
r
0.5 trial effect retained (judgment). Adult/child mix, visit intensity and modern usual care differ. [rct] [adult]
w
0.75 within-year effect timing retained (judgment). Avoid full endpoint effect credited before treatment.
T
1 years (judgment). No later years or asthma cure credited.
d
0.03 annual discount rate (judgment). One-year discount on finite morbidity benefit.
Q_filter_CA
null incremental California QALYs (unknown). Need unique effective use, additionality relative to AQMD and existing stock, pollutant exposure and duration; not filter count. [events26] [palos] [hepa-rct]
Q_policy_other_CA
null incremental California QALYs (unknown). Need finite implementation/dose/coalition bridge. [advocacy]
publicPurifierFunding
5000000 USD additional approved funding ceiling (observed). AQMD program, not Breathe funding or actual expenditures; substitution context only. [palos]

Judgment best estimate: BEAM health at full recipient cost: Cost: $2.9M; California QALYs: 0.13652912621359223; all-population QALYs: 0.13652912621359223. N = 100; b = 0.25; gCA = 1; deltaSFD14 = 2.1; deltaU = 0.1; r = 0.5; w = 0.75; T = 1; d = 0.03.

Weak annual delivery, responsiveness and health transfer: Cost: $2.9M; California QALYs: 0.0006225728155339806; all-population QALYs: 0.0006553398058252427. N=30; b=.05; deltaSFD14=2.1; deltaU=.03; r=.2; w=.5; T=1; gCA=.95; d=.03. Joint judgment stress case, not confidence limits.

Strong asthma margin and local share; not confidence bound: Cost: $2.9M; California QALYs: 6.553398058252427; all-population QALYs: 6.553398058252427. N = 300; b = 0.75; gCA = 1; deltaU = 0.2; r = 1; w = 1. Other clinical assumptions are unchanged.

Full substitution or no health improvement: Cost: $2.9M; California QALYs: 0; all-population QALYs: 0. No additional health beyond existing payer/public/private provision.

Unquantified adverse net effect remains possible: Cost: $2.9M; California QALYs: unknown; all-population QALYs: unknown. Ineffective use, exposure substitution and harmful policy trade-offs not assigned a fabricated negative bound.

Illustrative net harm, not a measured bound: Cost: $2.9M; California QALYs: -0.1; all-population QALYs: -0.1. A net .1 California QALY loss from displaced care or adverse effects; explicit stress test, not observed.

Unpriced remaining portfolio pathways: Cost: $2.9M; California QALYs: unknown; all-population QALYs: unknown. Purifier response and policy may add or subtract health; no invented amount is added to the BEAM estimate.

Counterfactual: Medi-Cal asthma preventive services/Community Supports, alternative providers, existing purifiers, AQMD funded distribution, donors and partner resources continue absent a new gift. A gift cannot retroactively change June smoke exposure, past distributions or an expired match.

Attribution: b is a subjective marginal responsiveness factor combining recipient allocation/capacity and substitution; clinical r and within-year w are separate. Do not apply both BEAM multimodal symptom gains and filtration gains to the same patient's same symptoms. Policy benefits need coalition counterfactual and geographic exposure allocation.

Finite judgment best estimate with broad joint scenarios, zero and harm. Unknown observed marginal inputs do not require suppressing the priced asthma pathway. The central is partial health at full gift cost, not a measured unrestricted-portfolio expectation. The utility prior represents expected net health area over the stated finite horizon, including treatment burden, within-horizon fade and competing mortality; it is not an endpoint score held indefinitely. No survival extension is credited.

Sensitivity

  • Central partial-health price $214,146,759.82222223 per10 California QALYs; low/high joint scenarios are subjective, not confidence bounds.
  • The California denominator includes eligible San Bernardino residents excluded in LA. The same underlying benefits must not be summed across editions.
  • 100 annual courses is weakly anchored to 300-plus cumulative patients across three calendar labels; actual annual throughput may differ.
  • Clinical transfer, within-year timing, utility and funding response dominate; no trial completion or payer substitution multiplier is added twice.
  • No lifetime asthma cure, overlapping purifier symptom benefit or unpriced policy uplift.

Unresolved inputs

  • Current unrestricted allocation, grant restrictions and costed unmet queue across asthma and purifier response.
  • Unique annual BEAM courses by county, completed service intensity and alternative payer/provider response.
  • Purifier households not already covered by AQMD, effective operating time, clean-air delivery, pollutant-specific exposure and health benefit.
  • Current post-September 4 appeal status; no active match established.
  • Finite policy health and geography model, avoiding attribution of all California burden to one coalition member.

5. Funding and previous grants

Original accrual returns for fiscal years ending June report expenses of $2,075,948 in 2023, $2,305,383 in 2024 and $2,923,727 in 2025: a three-year mean of $2,435,019.33. The 2024 return supplies the 2023 comparative. Its $4,719,274 revenue included $2,441,575 miscellaneous income; that unusually large category should not be assumed recurring clinical revenue. Original Form 990, fiscal year ending June 2024 with 2023 comparative totals

For 2025, revenue was $2,573,083, including $1,527,260 contributions and $814,003 rent. The return classifies every expense as program, with zero management/fundraising allocation; this does not establish zero overhead. It reports no independent financial-statement audit. Net assets were $10,700,896, including $4,612,972 restricted; Schedule O labels a $1,092,063 reconciliation addition only as a book/tax difference. Those facts merit clarification rather than interpreting the $350,644 revenue-expense deficit as proof that every gift funds additional care. Original Form 990, fiscal year ending June 2025

Government-grant and program-fee rows on that historical return do not negate the current contracts on the BEAM page. Detailed payer receipts, current BEAM cost centers and contract reimbursement margins are needed before allocating ordinary donations. BEAM services, eligibility, counties and managed-care contracts

DHCS's finalized update removes assessment and self-management education from the Asthma Remediation Community Support beginning January 2026 because the Asthma Preventive Services benefit covers them; physical supplies and modifications remain complementary remediation services. This is a separation to avoid duplication, not elimination of all asthma support. The old all-in-one description should not be used to infer a new donor gap or a flat payment received for each patient. Final asthma-remediation definitions and January 2026 benefit separation

Current DHCS resources describe a provider enrollment pathway for community organizations delivering asthma preventive services. A gift might improve access, pay unreimbursed navigation or serve people otherwise excluded, but a costed unmet queue and the alternative plan/provider response were not found. Current CHW and asthma provider enrollment resources

Annual expenses

Organization-level spending, including programs, administration and fundraising. The research list averages three comparable, consecutive full fiscal years when available.

  • FY 2023: $2.1M; Breathe Southern California, EIN 95-1641451, 12-month period, Accrual Form 990 total expenses; fiscal year ending June 30; no separately netted direct costs identified. Source
  • FY 2024: $2.3M; Breathe Southern California, EIN 95-1641451, 12-month period, Accrual Form 990 total expenses; fiscal year ending June 30; no separately netted direct costs identified. Source
  • FY 2025: $2.9M; Breathe Southern California, EIN 95-1641451, 12-month period, Accrual Form 990 total expenses; fiscal year ending June 30; no separately netted direct costs identified. Source

6. Sources

  1. Current portfolio and cumulative service counts. Breathe Southern California. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  2. BEAM services, eligibility, counties and managed-care contracts. Breathe Southern California. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  3. Lung Power education workshops. Breathe Southern California. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-13.
  4. Current advocacy portfolio and historical campaigns. Breathe Southern California. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-13.
  5. Ordinary donation route. Breathe Southern California via Zeffy. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-13.
  6. Randomized Medicaid childhood-asthma home-visit outcomes and costs. Campbell et al., American Journal of Public Health. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-13.
  7. HomeBASE randomized adult asthma trial. Krieger et al., JAMA Internal Medicine. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-13.
  8. Final asthma-remediation definitions and January 2026 benefit separation. California DHCS. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-13.
  9. Current CHW and asthma provider enrollment resources. California DHCS. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-13.
  10. Chaptered AB 1003 text. California Legislature. Published: 2025-10-13; retrieved: 2026-09-13.
  11. Original Form 990, fiscal year ending June 2025. Breathe Southern California / IRS via ProPublica. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  12. Original Form 990, fiscal year ending June 2024 with 2023 comparative totals. Breathe Southern California / IRS via ProPublica. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  13. Official 2026 community events and purifier eligibility. Breathe Southern California. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  14. Building-decarbonization support. Breathe Southern California. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  15. BlueSky LA programs. Breathe Southern California. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  16. 2026 Palos Fire / Lineage Cleanup and Recovery; public purifier funding. South Coast AQMD. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  17. Organization-authored purifier response and past matching appeal; post date unverified. Breathe Southern California via LinkedIn. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  18. AAFA 2026 certified-partner community response. AAFA / Asthma & Allergy Friendly. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  19. HEPA air cleaners: randomized asthma visit and symptom outcomes. Lanphear et al.; Pediatrics. Published: 2010-12-13; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  20. Current IRS filing index, freshness check. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  21. Original FY2023 Form 990; accrual and netted-cost rows independently reopened. Breathe Southern California / IRS. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.