Episode Details

Asthma can cause sometimes debilitating symptoms for children who have it, and some—particularly Black and Hispanic children—can experience higher rates of diagnoses, hospitalizations and emergency department visits. In this episode: pediatrician and immunology researcher Dr. Elizabeth Matsui talks about the known causes behind childhood asthma and how it impacts youths, and how factors like poor housing conditions and barriers to care and medication worsen conditions and undermine long-term lung development.

Dr. Elizabeth Matsui is a pediatric allergist-immunologist and epidemiologist and a leading researcher on the connection between asthma and environmental conditions.

Stephanie Desmon, MA, is a former journalist, author, and the director of public relations and communications for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

• The Role of Neighborhood Air Pollution in Disparate Racial and Ethnic Asthma Acute Care Use—American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine

• Association of a Housing Mobility Program With Childhood Asthma Symptoms and Exacerbations—JAMA

• Do upper respiratory viruses contribute to racial and ethnic disparities in emergency department visits for asthma?—The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology

• Tackling Housing Injustice—and Improving Childhood Asthma—Public Health On Call (June 2023)

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