Asthma Statistics

LOCALLY:

In the early 90s, asthma hospitalizations for adult residents of Bayview Hunters Point were more than 4 times the state average. Hospitalizations for children were more than 3 times the state average.¹
Within San Francisco, morbidity rates for African-Americans were more than twice those for whites.²
36% of Bayview Hunters Point families who responded to a recent survey reported an asthma diagnosis or asthma-like symptoms affecting their elementary school children.³
In one Bayview Hunters Point elementary school, 80 of its 280 students were diagnosed with asthma.⁴

NATIONWIDE:
Asthma ranks among the most common chronic conditions in the United States, affecting an estimated 14.9 million persons as of 1995. The estimated direct and indirect monetary costs for this disease totaled $11.3 billion in 1998. Asthma disproportionately affects children and blacks. In 1995, the rate of hospitalization among African-Americans was 3.5 times that among whites.

Sources:

1. University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco Department of Public Health, Bayview Hunters Point Health and Environmental Assessment Task Force.

2. California Department of Health Services: County Health Status Profiles 1997; California County Asthma Hospitalization Chart Book, August 1997; San Francisco Department of Health Services Kindergarten Retrospective Surveys; San Francisco Department of Public Health.

3. Condition Critical: The Bayview/Hunters Point 94124 School and Community Asthma Survey Report (May 19, 1999)

4. San Francisco Chronicle, "High Rate of Disease in Bayview," June 9, 1997.

5. National Statistics: "Asthma Statistics," National Institutes of Health National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (January 1999).

2008 © Health & Environmental Resource Center (415) 401-6810
funded by San Francisco Department of Public Health & the Mayor's Office

Asthma Statistics

LOCALLY:

NATIONWIDE: