CDC asks for more state data on asthma control

The disease has been on the rise for 20 years, and now the public health emphasis shifts away from prevention strategies toward tracking asthma care.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. May 26, 2003.

For the first time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has included state-specific data related to control of asthma's symptoms in its annual asthma prevalence report published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

For years, the agency has tracked the increasing prevalence of asthma through its Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and various other surveys, but only analysis of national and regional hospitalization data has provided the occasional insight into the care of those individuals who already have the condition.

For the 2001 data published earlier this month, however, eight states included questions about factors related to disease control, including emergency department visits, activity limitations and sleep disturbance. In the 2002 survey, which will be available next year, that number increased to 22. The CDC also is planning a National Asthma Survey in upcoming months that will delve even further into asthma health care and quality-of-life issues.

According to the CDC, the inclusion of these questions and the new survey represent a fundamental shift in the public health philosophy regarding the disease. Tracking the prevalence is important because asthma has dramatically increased. But in the absence of effective prevention strategies, public health officials say that there is little they can do with these data.

"You really can't control how many people have asthma because we don't have a primary prevention program," said David Mannino, MD, one of the authors of the paper and a medical epidemiologist for the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health.