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Minority children most negatively affected by Asthma
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Cheerful
Joined: 14-Aug-2007
Posts: 123
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Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2007 02:40 am
Post topic: Minority children most negatively affected by Asthma |
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Among Americans with asthma, minority children are in by far the worst situation, according to the NY Times. The numbers are striking: in the United States, 20 percent of Puerto Rican children, or one in five, have asthma. Among African-American youngsters, the rate is 13 percent, compared with the national childhood average of 8 percent. In addition, since 1999 asthma-related mortality rates have dropped for Americans as a whole, but not for minority children. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, African-American and Puerto Rican children are six times as likely as white children to die of asthma. In minority children, “the prevalence of asthma is about 40 percent higher, but the difference in the adverse outcomes is three times, four times higher for hospitalizations,” said Dr. Lara Akinbami, a researcher at the center who tracks childhood asthma. “Given that we have the tools to prevent those things, that does reach the level of a public health crisis.”
To read more, go to: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/health/healthguide/esn-asthmachildren-ess.html |
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Tags: minority |
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RavenCares
Joined: 25-Jul-2007
Posts: 197
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Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2007 05:17 am
Post topic: Minority children most negatively affected by Asthma |
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Wow, those statistics are pretty scary! Do the researchers know yet why asthma is so much higher in minority children? I wonder if it has anything to do with living in the inner city? Thanks for sharing the information, Cheerful! --Raven |
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Cheerful
Joined: 14-Aug-2007
Posts: 123
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Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2007 06:49 pm
Post topic: Minority children most negatively affected by Asthma |
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According to the article, several factors contribute to the high rate of asthma among minoruty children. 1) Socioeconomic status, particularly in terms of environment. Children in poor inner-city communities are disproportionately exposed to both indoor and outdoor allergens — cockroaches, mice, mold, dust, cigarette smoke, automobile exhaust, soot — that can trigger breathing problems. 2) Chronic lack of access to outpatient health care and the poorer quality of care in inner-city neighborhoods. Successful asthma care depends on regular medical maintenance, and poor urban children have less reliable access to doctors’ offices and clinics, more often relying on emergency room visits for treatment. 3)Patterns of medication. Inner-city children with asthma tend to overuse fast-acting rescue medications like albuterol at the expense of long-acting preventive medication like Flovent or Pulmicort. 4) Language and other social barriers often prevent doctors from accurately assessing how asthma patients are using their medicines at home. 5) Genetic factors may also play a role. African-Americans are more likely to have a genetic characteristic that makes them more vulnerable to the adverse effects of overusing rescue medications. And even after controlling for socioeconomic factors, African-American children tend to have higher levels of allergies, which are related to asthma in about 85 percent of cases, than white children. Among Puerto Rican children, the incidence of asthma is equally high both in mainland cities and on the island of Puerto Rico, pointing to a possible genetic predisposition to developing the disease. |
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sadielady
Joined: 26-Aug-2007
Posts: 42
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Malena
Joined: 06-Oct-2007
Posts: 22
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Cheerful
Joined: 14-Aug-2007
Posts: 123
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Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2007 06:35 am
Post topic: Minority children most negatively affected by Asthma |
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Malena, you're right. Smog and all the junk in the air in the inner cities just makes it that much harder for ppl with asthma. My asthma has been better since I moved to the mountains. Not everyone has that option though! |
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RavenCares
Joined: 25-Jul-2007
Posts: 197
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Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2007 05:05 am
Post topic: Minority children most negatively affected by Asthma |
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I lived in Los Angeles for a few years when I was a child. The smog would get so bad on some days that it was hard to breathe. And I don't even have asthma! The radio and TV stations used to issue smog alerts, and our Physical Education classes would be held indoors in the gym. I don't miss the smog at all, that's for sure! |
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Malena
Joined: 06-Oct-2007
Posts: 22
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Svodak
Joined: 18-Feb-2008
Posts: 1
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Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 04:24 pm
Post topic: Minority children most negatively affected by Asthma |
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My son has had asthma since he was a few months old. My husband and I were, at that time, in a low-income bracket, and relied on Medicaid, Food stamps, and WIC just to survive while my husband worked for $7.00 an hour at a retail salesman. We could not figure out why it showed up so suddenly, and so fiercely (requiring around 3-4 breathing treatments a day with albuterol). After his first bout with pneumonia landed him in the hospital, we started researching the causes of asthma, and how best to treat it. We quickly realized that there were certain things that set us apart from other, more well-off families. The first was the environmental consequences of living in poor conditions. We lived in a trailer that should have been condemned, but we had no money, so we were stuck. there was little to no insulation, and as we found out later, the previous residents had been smoking cigarettes, marijuana, and even meth in there. We moved right after that. To test our theory that the trailer caused a lot of the asthma, we stayed with my grandparents, who are better off financially than us and can afford to buy expensive air purifiers and such and are clean freaks (nary a speck of dust in the house) for only 3 days. By the 3rd morning, his asthma attacks completely resolved.
The other thing that set us apart from the "rich" kids with asthma is the lack of medication choices. It made me angry when I found out that Xopenex, a newer, more pure form of albuterol that has less side-effects, was not covered under medicaid. Also, medicaid would only cover 3 prescriptions a month, which meant that, after my son's allergy prescription, as well as the singulair for the asthma, when he would get yet another ear infection or bronchitis, we had to pay out-of-pocket for the med to treat it.
Unfortunately, we had to move into another old, stuffy trailer, but at least this one doesn't make him as sick as the other one. But he still has to take the Singulair daily, although the Albuterol is rarely necessary now with certain things we've done to reduce the dust levels in the house (dusting regularly, vacuuming regularly, changing the air filters once a month, etc) while he's not in the house, cause if I dust while he's here, he'll have a really bad attack that sometimes will be so forceful in his coughing that he'll vomit.
So, yeah, I think poverty has a LOT to do with asthma. |
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Sissy
Joined: 18-Jul-2007
Posts: 245
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