Childhood Asthma Rates Are Highest In North St. Louis, Wash U Study Finds
A Washington University study has shown that more than a dozen north St. Louis neighborhoods have high rates of childhood asthma.
The study, soon to be published in the journal Social Science & Medicine, identified five ZIP codes in St. Louis that are hot spots for childhood asthma, meaning that they contain clusters for the city's highest rates of the illness. The report used census and health data from multiple government agencies.
The rate of hospitalizations for childhood asthma for those ZIP codes, which include downtown St. Louis, Baden and North Riverfront neighborhoods, are five times that of two ZIP codes in southwest St. Louis, which have the lowest presence of the illness.
The hot spots highlighted in the paper are home to mostly black and low-income residents. Health care resources are more scarce in those areas than in other parts of the city, said Kelly Harris, a postdoctoral researcher at Washington University’s Child Health and Education Laboratory.
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