Do Parents of Urban Children With Persistent Asthma Ban Smoking in Their Homes and Cars?
Section snippets
Setting and Participants
We conducted this study by using interview data from an office-based asthma intervention based in 3 urban pediatric clinics in Rochester, NY. We included children ages 2–12 years with physician diagnosed asthma who had asthma symptoms noted in their medical record within the previous 2 years. Children were eligible for enrollment if they arrived at the office for any scheduled visit with a physician or nurse practitioner. We included asthmatic children presenting to the office for any reason,
Results
Of the 301 asthmatic subjects enrolled, 231 had persistent asthma symptoms and were included in this analysis (mean age 6.3 years). Table 1 shows the demographic characteristics of these children. The majority of the subjects were boys (60%), and 71% were enrolled in Medicaid. Fifty-five percent of the children were described as African American, and 31% described Hispanic ethnicity. The children were selected if they had persistent asthma symptoms, and more than one-third had severe persistent
Discussion
These data demonstrate that many urban children with asthma are not living in smoke-free environments and likely are experiencing preventable morbidity. Overall, less than two-thirds of the children were protected by complete smoking bans. Exposure to smoke in the car was relatively common (26%), and is of particular concern because ETS in the car is significantly more concentrated than in a house. Although approximately 10% of children living with nonsmokers were exposed to ETS, the majority
Acknowledgments
The research for this article was funded by grants from the Halcyon Hill Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Generalist Physician Faculty Scholars Program. We thank George B. Segel, MD, for his insightful review of the manuscript, and Kathy Lynch, BA, for her help with manuscript preparation.
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2011, Academic PediatricsCitation Excerpt :the smoking status of the primary caregiver (“Does the child’s primary caregiver smoke?”), and the household rules regarding in-home smoking and smoking bans.16 To further evaluate children’s smoke exposure, we also measured salivary cotinine.