Racial, social, and environmental risks for childhood asthma

Article Abstract:

The influence of racial and socioeconomic factors on the prevalence of childhood asthma is not known, but was investigated in this study. The relationship of these effects to social and environmental characteristics was also assessed. The data were obtained from the Child Health Supplement to the 1981 National Health Interview Survey, which included 15,416 children. The results showed that childhood asthma was more prevalent in black children than white children (4.4 percent versus 2.5 percent, respectively). The rate of onset of asthma between the ages of one and three years was higher in blacks than whites, and this disparity was responsible for the difference between the races at older ages as well. Increased prevalence of childhood asthma was also associated with poverty, maternal cigarette smoking, large family size, smaller size of home, low birth weight, and maternal age of less than 20 years at the child's birth. However, when these social and environmental characteristics were eliminated from the analysis, the rates of asthma were similar among all children. This suggests that social and environmental characteristics greatly influence the rates of childhood asthma, and that the racial and socioeconomic differences in prevalence of asthma are related to the social and environmental characteristics. (Consumer Summary produced by Reliance Medical Information, Inc.)

Risk factors, Demographic aspects, Environmental aspects, Asthma in children, Childhood asthma

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Securing the future

Article Abstract:

Loan abatements should be made available to medical school graduates interested in pursuing careers as pediatric research scientists. The availability of loan abatement programs for pediatric primary care providers appears to be causing medical school graduates to make this career choice in order to relieve their loan indebtedness. This will have a negative effect on pediatric research, where abatement programs are not available, and even on primary care pediatrics if persons temperamentally unsuited to primary care practice choose this option solely for financial reasons. The University of Rochester has instituted a loan abatement program for promising pediatric residents interested in academic and research careers. The developers of that program call for national organizations such as the National Institutes of Health to do the same.

Editorial, Management, Finance, Study and teaching, Pediatrics, Medical education, Student loans

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