Respiratory Clinical Nurse Specialist (Children’s) and CYP Asthma Joint Clinical Lead, Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital

For Jason Lenton, the measure of good asthma care is beautifully simple: a child who sleeps through the night, goes to school, plays, and lives well. Achieving that, consistently and for every child regardless of their background, has been the driving force behind more than three decades of nursing.

Jason has been a children’s nurse since 1993 and a Children’s Respiratory Clinical Nurse Specialist since 2003. Based at the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital, he runs nurse-led asthma clinics, supports specialist multi-disciplinary team and consultant-led clinics for children with difficult and severe asthma, and reviews children presenting in the Emergency Department and across inpatient wards. This breadth of practice means he can follow children and families across the full arc of their condition — from first presentation through to complex case management — providing continuity that makes early intervention possible and crises less likely.

Every child Jason sees leaves with a Personalised Asthma Action Plan, inhaler device education and a technique review. But his approach goes much further than clinical checklists. Conversations explore housing, air quality, family stress and mental health — the wider factors that shape long-term outcomes and that no prescription alone can address. Working in close partnership with primary care colleagues, Jason helps to form part of a joined-up network of support around each child, ensuring that primary, secondary and community care work together seamlessly rather than in isolation. “Being part of a health system that takes a whole-person, prevention-focused approach is what makes care meaningful, effective, and so rewarding,” reflects Jason.

Alongside his clinical work, Jason is seconded one day a week as joint Children and Young People Asthma Clinical Lead, helping to build a pan-Sussex asthma network and ensuring that frontline expertise directly informs pathway development across the region.

“For me, prevention matters most,” he says. “When a child’s asthma is well controlled, they can sleep through the night, go to school, play, and live well — and every child deserves that.”

Jason’s work is prevention in the fullest sense: protecting not just a child’s health today, but their lung function and quality of life for decades to come.