TUESDAY, Nov. 28, 2023 (HealthDay News) — Neighborhoods with higher socioeconomic and educational opportunity are more likely to have lower rates of asthma-related emergency department visits among children younger than 5 years of age, according to a study published online Oct. 23 in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

Jordan Tyris, M.D., from Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., and colleagues assessed how social determinants of health correlate to the disproportionately high rates of asthma morbidity experienced by children younger than 5 years old. The analysis included 3,806 children younger than 5 years old with physician-diagnosed asthma participating in the DC Asthma Registry from 2018 through 2019.

The researchers found that 56 percent of participants had emergency department encounters and 22 percent had hospitalizations. There was an association observed between greater census tract overall Child Opportunity Index (COI), social/economic COI, and educational COI and fewer emergency department at-risk rates. Health/environmental COI was not associated with either emergency department or hospitalization at-risk rates.

“These findings highlight the importance of considering efforts to improve social, educational, and economic-related characteristics of communities as another method to reduce asthma morbidity in early childhood,” Tyris said in a statement.

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