5024.0: Wednesday, November 15, 2000: 8:30 AM-10:00 AM | ||||
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| Mortality and morbidity rates for asthma continue to be alarming and constitute a major public health problem. From 1990 to 1994 just under 500,000 hospitalizations per year were attributable to asthma. Asthma is the leading cause of emergency department visits for children (excluding accidents). It results in almost 2 billion dollars a year in lost time from work and school, and 2½ billion in costs for medical care. African Americans and some groups of Hispanic children exhibit an especially high prevalence of asthma symptoms. Screening has been posted as a promising way to identify those with asthma and increasingly has been undertaken in communities around the country, especially in schools. However, a number of questions can be raised about population wide screening for asthma: · what screening procedures are most likely to identify persons with asthma? · what are innovative and effective means of screening? · what methodological and logistical problems are to be expected in screening? · can standardized screening procedures be developed for wide-spread use? · can national guidelines for determining severity of asthma be applied in screening? · can screening costs and structures be borne by school and/or public health agencies? · how can effective follow-up and clinical service be provided subsequent to screening? Panelists will address these questions as they describe the screening projects in which they are involved in various cities in the U.S | ||||
| See individual abstracts for presenting author's disclosure statement. | ||||
| Learning Objectives: Refer to the individual abstracts for learning objectives | ||||
| Stephen Redd, MD Noreen Clark Clive M Brown, MD, MPH | ||||
| Asthma screening of low income children in Houston, Texas L. Kay Bartholomew, EdD, MPH, Susan Tortolero, PhD | ||||
| Cluster analysis of spatial distribution of childhood asthmatic morbidity in South Carolina emergency department and hospital discharges data 1996-1998 Gabriel Suciu, PhD, Steven McLaughlin, DVM, MPH, John Iskander, MD, Tim Aldrich, PhD, MPH | ||||
| North Carolina statewide schoolbased asthma surveillance of diagnosed and undiagnosed asthmatic children KB Yeatts, PhD, M Sotir, MS, CM Shy, MD | ||||
| The following abstracts have been withdrawn by the authors: | ||||
| Screening for asthma using exhaled nitric oxide Margot R Krauss, MD, MPH | ||||
| Sponsor: | Epidemiology | |||
| Cosponsors: | Community Health Planning and Policy Development; Medical Care | |||