Children who grow up today in neighborhoods that were redlined, or graded low for home loans, in the 1930s are slightly more likely to have asthma, according to a new study involving UW-Madison researchers. Researchers said the study, which looked at more than 4,800 children in Madison and six other cities, suggests that systemic racism exemplified by the federal government’s redlining system nearly a century ago persists today in elevated childhood asthma rates. “The health disparities that exist today didn’t just happen — there are root causes,” Patrick Ryan, a researcher at Cincinnati Children’s hospital and lead author of the study, said in a statement.
“This study applied new technologies linking addresses to exposures to demonstrate just how important housing and economic factors are in determining the risk for developing childhood asthma,” said Dr. James Gern, a pediatrician and asthma specialist at UW Health, who leads a consortium that carried out the research. “Improving living conditions and addressing structural racism are likely to markedly reduce childhood asthma and have many other health benefits,” Gern said.
Asthma, which causes inflammation in the airways and can make it hard to breathe, affects more than 4.6 million children in the U.S.
, leading to thousands of emergency hospital visits and more than 150 deaths each year. The study involved children from seven cities including Madison: Boston, Baltimore, New York, Nashville, St. Louis an.
