Health and Safety - Asthma

The July 2003 American Lung Association fact sheet "Asthma in Children" reported that asthma was the leading chronic illness in children. Childhood asthma was the third leading cause of hospitalization among children younger than fifteen, and caused 14.6 million missed days of school in 2002. A National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) survey found that in 2001 8.7% of children from infancy to seventeen years, or 6.3 million, suffered from asthma. The American Lung Association estimated that

TABLE 5.13

High school participation in physical activity, by demographic characteristics, 2003
	Participated in sufficient vigorous physical activitya			Participated in sufficient moderate physical activityb
	Female	Male	Total	Female	Male	Total
Category	%	%	%	%	%	%
aExercised or participated in physical activities that made students sweat and breathe hard for 20 minutes on 3 of the 7 days preceding the survey (e.g., basketball, soccer, running, swimming laps, fast bicycling, fast dancing, or similar aerobic activities).
bPhysical activities that did not make students sweat and breathe hard for 30 minutes on 5 of the 7 days preceding the survey (e.g., fast walking, slow bicycling, skating, pushing a lawn mower, or mopping floors).
cNon-Hispanic.
SOURCE: "Table 50. Percentage of High School Students Who Participated in Sufficient Vigorous Physical Activity and Sufficient Moderate Physical Activity, by Sex, Race/Ethnicity, and Grade," in "Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance—United States, 2003," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Surveillance Summaries: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, vol. 53, no. SS–02, May 21, 2004, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/PDF/SS/SS5302.pdf (accessed September 4, 2003)
Race/ethnicity
Whitec	58.1	71.9	65.2	23.3	28.9	26.2
Blackc	44.9	65.0	54.8	17.5	25.8	21.7
Hispanic	51.8	66.7	59.3	20.6	23.3	22.0
Grade
9	63.6	73.1	68.5	22.3	28.3	25.4
10	58.2	71.5	64.9	25.3	26.2	25.7
11	49.4	70.4	60.1	20.0	28.1	24.2
12	46.4	63.7	55.0	20.0	26.3	23.2
Total	55.0	70.0	62.6	22.1	27.2	24.7

up to a million asthmatic children are exposed to secondhand smoke, worsening their condition. In 2000 223 children died from complications of asthma.

A study published in the August 2002 issue of Pediatrics ("Residential Exposures Associated with Asthma in U.S. Children") concluded from a 1988 to 1994 survey that a higher percentage of African-American children (8.9%) than white children (5.2%) have asthma. Experts suggest that because a higher number of African-Americans than other racial and ethnic groups lack health insurance and live in poverty they are more likely to postpone treatment and rely on emergency room care rather than preventive medications and treatment. A 2003 University of Rochester Medical Center Study found that white children with asthma were 1.7 to two times more likely than African-American children to use medication to prevent sudden asthma attacks (Pediatric Academic Societies, News Release, "Race Plays Role in Children's Care in Emergency Department," released May 3, 2004, http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/504300 [accessed August 3, 2004]).