HEALTHCDC funds four-year inner-city asthma intervention projectThe federal agency has awarded grant money to finance the work of asthma counselors in disadvantaged neighborhoods.By Victoria Stagg Elliott, amednews staff. March 12, 2001. When children with asthma visit James Moy, MD, director of the division of pediatric allergies at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, they've usually been referred by their main source of care -- the emergency department of this inner-city public hospital. They often come to his office with issues that affect their health -- issues far beyond a doctor's ability to treat. They're more likely to be the children of teenage mothers who barely know how to take care of a healthy child, let alone one with a chronic illness. These patients have multiple caretakers -- parents, extended family members and day care workers -- not all of whom may know how to deal with asthma. And they're more likely to have parents who smoke or who are not literate enough in English to understand instructions in how to care for a sick child. These young patients often live in substandard housing in which landlords have not eliminated cockroach or mouse infestations. Financial difficulties mean vital utilities are sometimes cut off. Their families usually don't have health insurance, and even if they do, primary care physicians rarely locate their offices in inner-city neighborhoods, making it too expensive for families to get to a doctor's appointment. All this has contributed to a situation in which children from the inner city -- who are more likely to be asthmatic anyway -- are also more likely than their suburban peers to end up in the emergency department, to miss school days and to have their asthma poorly controlled.
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Copyright 2001 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
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