HERC

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 (35%) 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:

  • University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco Department of Public Health, Bayview Hunters Point Health and Environmental Assessment Task Force.
  • 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.
  • Condition Critical: The Bayview/Hunters Point 94124 School and Community Asthma Survey Report (May 19, 1999)
  • San Francisco Chronicle, "High Rate of Disease in Bayview," June 9, 1997.
  • National Statistics: "Asthma Statistics," National Institutes of Health National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (January 1999).