A recent NPR report, citing data from the National Center for Health Statistics, notes that overall childhood asthma rates in the United States have finally stopped increasing:
“There’s finally some good news about childhood asthma in the United States: After rising for decades, the number of children with the breathing disorder has finally stopped increasing and may have started falling, according to a government analysis.”
Despite these overall decreasing rates of asthma, children living in poverty and African American children, continue to experience increasing rates of asthma:
“[A]sthma prevalence continues to rise among children in the poorest families and remains far more common among African-American children than white children. More than 14 percent of black children have asthma, compared with about 8 percent of white children. Black children are also much more likely than white children to suffer severe complications.”
Researchers are not sure why the disparity in asthma rates persists.
