It's Asthma Awareness Month!

Post written by Thu Nguyen

Thu serves as an Asthma Educator at Respiratory Health Association

May is Asthma Awareness Month! There is a great disparity in asthma prevalence in the city of Chicago.

According to Naureckas et al. 1:

1) Students are 39% more likely to have a lifetime diagnosis of asthma if from a predominately (>98%) black school than schools with other predominant ethnicities.2) There is 20% higher asthma prevalence among non-Hispanic blacks than non-Hispanic whites.
3) There are 4.3 times more asthma hospitalizations in non-Hispanic black neighborhoods than other neighborhoods
4) Non-Hispanic black residents are nearly 8 times more likely to die from asthma than non-Hispanic white residents.
5) From 1992 and 2003, only 2 non-Hispanic white children less than 15 years died from asthma while there were 83 deaths due to asthma in non-Hispanic black children.

because without empowerment, those tools become useless. I hope that, through our asthma programs, I can contribute to closing the asthma disparity gap.

Last week, I was teaching a 7th and 8th grade class when one student, Jonathan*, experienced an asthma attack. I quickly sent him to the nurse's office to take his medicine. He shortly returned, and I didn't think much of the experience. After class, during discussion with the principal, I learned that the principal himself was diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma in his 30s. However, while the doctor gave him an inhaler, he never learned how to properly use it. That day, the principal finally learned the proper steps when Jonathan came down to the office to use his inhaler. Jonathan taught him all the steps, saying,'yea, Ms. N upstairs told us to do this".

As a reminder, May is Asthma Awareness Month so spread the word and help us decrease this disparity! To find more information about asthma management, please visit http://www.lungchicago.org/asthma/.

Reference:

*Name has been changed for confidentiality