Asthma in California: A Surveillance Report

Details

• Personal Author:
  Flattery J ; Lutzker L ; Milet M ; Wohl-Sanchez L
• Description:
  Asthma is one of the most common chronic diseases and has been recognized as a growing public health concern. The effects of asthma include missed school and work days, disruption of sleep and daily activities, urgent medical visits for asthma exacerbations, and even death. Asthma affects not only those with the disease but also their family members and friends, as well as schools and businesses. There is no cure for asthma, but symptoms can be controlled with access to medical care, appropriate medications, proper self-management, and trigger reduction. When asthma is controlled, people can lead normal lives and achieve their goals. California's asthma surveillance system uses data from a wide variety of sources to describe the burden of asthma in the state. Surveillance data include, but are not limited to: the number of people with asthma, levels of symptoms, use of routine health care, visits to the emergency department (ED) and hospital, costs of health care utilization, and deaths due to asthma. Using all of the most recent available statewide surveillance data, this report presents a comprehensive summary of the burden of asthma in California. Approximately five million Californians have been diagnosed with asthma at some point in their lives, and almost three million currently have asthma. Over one in five with current asthma are considered to have very poorly controlled asthma. Asthma results in an estimated 11.8 million days of work/usual activities missed per year among adults and 1.2 days of school/day care missed per year among children. Surveillance data show that there is much room for improvement in routine health care for people with asthma. More than half of adults with current asthma have not had a routine asthma checkup in the past year and only 40% of adults and children with asthma have received a written asthma action plan from their health care provider. More encouraging is that the rates of the most serious outcomes - hospitalizations and deaths due to asthma - have declined. Still, there are about 400 deaths, 35,000 hospital discharges, and 180,000 emergency department visits per year due to asthma. In addition, the costs of asthma hospitalizations are enormous - over $1 billion in 2010. Proper prevention efforts could reduce many of these poor outcomes and costs. For example, 12% of people who were hospitalized for asthma in 2010 had at least one repeat visit during that year. Intervening to prevent these repeat asthma hospitalizations could potentially have saved $156 million in medical costs. Across all measures of asthma burden, there are large disparities by race/ethnicity, income, age, sex, and other characteristics. Blacks have especially disproportionate rates of asthma ED visits, hospitalizations, and mortality. Although people of all incomes have a similar prevalence of asthma, people with lower incomes have more poorly controlled asthma, higher rates of ED visits and hospitalizations, and are more likely to have repeat hospitalizations. These and other key findings of this report are listed below. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Asthma Asthma, Occupational Chronic Disease Delivery Of Health Care Epidemiology Healthcare Disparities Occupational Health Respiratory System Respiratory Tract Diseases Safety
• Keywords:
  Chronic Diseases Health Disparities Medical Care Respiratory Diseases Surveillance Surveillance Programs
• Publisher:
  California Department of Public Health
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Cooperative Agreement
• Genre:
  Report
• Place as Subject:
  California ; OSHA Region 9
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  1-186
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20059415
• Citation:
  Richmond, CA: California Department of Public Health, 2013 May; :1-186
• Contact Point Address:
  Meredith Milet, MPH, California Department of Public Health, Environmental Health Investigations Branch, 850 Marina Bay Parkway, Building P, 3rd Floor, Richmond, CA 94804
• Email:
  meredith.milet@cdph.ca.gov
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2013
• Performing Organization:
  Public Health Institute
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Start Date:
  20050701
• Source Full Name:
  Asthma in California: a surveillance report
• End Date:
  20260630
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:1fe3a431de01c596b668415bf93054a129181bb6d5762385ee7401119e8647496bda1a5ee980fa2768be6dc576618ad830058cba1869a2a0c47d530ee90df083
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/223661/cdc_223661_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 5.41 MB ]