Children belonging to ethnic minority and low-income groups face an increased risk of suffering from asthma, new research shows.
Dr Tyra Bryant-Stephens of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, explains that asthma is the most common chronic childhood disease.
Despite effective treatments for asthma, it disproportionately affects ethnic minority and low-income groups, she writes in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
But the inequality is greater for quality of treatment than for overall asthma rates. In fact, gap between healthcare standards for black and white groups is widening. African American and Latino children living in low-income, urban environments in the US are at the highest risk of complications.
Black children are more than twice as likely to experience asthma-related emergency department visits and hospitalisations, and five times more likely to die from asthma than white children.
There are many causes, Dr Bryant-Stephens says, including poor housing which leads to increased exposure to asthma allergens, access to care, and social and psychosocial stressors which are often unappreciated.
Having children at a younger age, low birth weight, and being overweight or obese also increase asthma risk. The result is that some children receive inadequate treatment, she warns.
She says that this inequality is unacceptable, but efforts to reduce it have not always been successful. Those that work best combine a range of successful strategies and are based on cultural and health beliefs.
More interventions are essential to "finally close the gap", she believes. "We will need to cross boundaries and together advocate for fundamental changes to improve outcomes for minority children with asthma."
Bryant-Stephens, T. Asthma disparities in urban environments. The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Vol. 123, June 2009, pp. 1199-1206.
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