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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
Louis Daily, PhD, Robert Hodge, MS, MPH, PhD, and Michelle S. Davis, MSPH, PhD. Health Commissioner's Office, City of Philadelphia, Department of Public Health, 1101 Market St., 8th Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107, 215-685-5214, Louis.Daily@phila.gov
A growing body of research links environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) to the prevalence and severity of asthma. For instance, children with asthma are significantly more likely to be exposed to ETS than non-asthmatics, and children are four times as likely to develop asthma if their mothers smoked more than 20 cigarettes per day. In addition, among adult non-smokers, childhood exposure to ETS is associated with increased prevalence of asthma. The present ecologic study investigated whether self-reported rates of ETS in neighborhood households are correlated with respondent-reported rates of asthma in children from the same neighborhoods. Data were analyzed from the Community Health Data Base, Southeastern Pennsylvania Household Health Survey collected during 2000. Adult respondents were asked if any children in the home have asthma or if anyone in the house smoked. We evaluated, by demographics and zipcode, the percentage of households which reported ETS and a percentage of children with reported asthma. The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was .433 (p<.01). In other words, the higher the percentage of households with ETS in a particular zipcode, the higher the percentage of children with asthma was reported for the same zipcode. This initial ecologic study will be followed up by a study examining the relationship between childhood asthma and adult smoking in the same household.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Asthma, Tobacco
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.