Asthma Prevalence in an Inner-city Head Start Sample: Links with Family Income, Education and Race/Ethnicity

Authors

  • Ozlem Bekar The New School for Social Research The Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services
  • Ellen Halpern ICDL Graduate School
  • Faith Lamb-Parker Bank Street College
  • Howard Steele The New School
  • Miriam Steele
  • Rebecca Shahmoon-Shanok The Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.55370/hsdialog.v18i1.188

Keywords:

asthma-innercity, childhood, poverty, race/ethnicity, Head Start

Abstract

The Head Start Bureau has described asthma as a “growing problem†and “top chronic disease among Head Start children†(Rehnquist, 2002). This study examined the racial/ethnic and SES-based contributors to asthma prevalence among children attending three Head Start centers in a multi-ethnic, densely populated city in the U.S. Sample consisted of 1312 families. Findings indicated that poverty -over and above the effects of race/ethnicity- was a primary risk factor for asthma in this population: every thousand dollars increase in yearly income decreased the odds of asthma by 4%. In addition, Hispanic/Latino ethnicity and Asian race were predictive of very high and very low rates of asthma, respectively. There was a positive relationship between asthma status and caregivers' education level, which may play a role in reporting of asthma cases. These findings are of significant value to inform formulation of effective intervention programs at Head Start centers.

 

 

Author Biographies

Ozlem Bekar, The New School for Social Research The Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services

Department of Clinical Psychology

Howard Steele, The New School

Department of Clinical Psychology

Miriam Steele

Department of Clinical Psychology

Downloads

Published

2014-04-24

Issue

Vol. 18 No. 1

Section

Research Articles

License

This Agreement (the Agreement) is made by and between the authors and the HS Dialog Editorial Team.

Author Agreement

By submitting the research article to HS Dialog, I acknowledge it may be published by the J. Murrey Atkins Library at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the Author(s) certify that:

  1. Warranties:
    1. Authors are legally authorized and possesses full power and authority on behalf of co-authors to enter into this Agreement.
    2. Author warrants, on behalf of all article authors, that:
    3. The article is original, has not been formally published in any other peer-reviewed journal, is not under consideration for publication by any other journal and does not infringe any existing copyright or any other third party rights;
    4. The named authors are the sole author(s) of the article. Any co-author not signing this Agreement personally has granted full authority to the main author and agree to enter into this agreement of his/her behalf and to gran the following rights to HS Dialog.
    5. The article contains nothing that is unlawful, libellous, or which would, if published, constitute a breach of contract.

II.Copyright

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Author(s) shall retain copyright to the article but grant the Journal right of first publication, and the irrevocable right to perpetually disseminate the article as part of the Journal subject to the Creative Commons Attribution License, that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Beginning one year after the date of formal publication of the article, Authors may enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work and subject to the Creative Commons Attribution License (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), subject to a proper acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal: This article was originally published in HS Dialog (Vol., Issue, Year).

III. Indemnification.

Author shall indemnify, defend, and hold harmless the Journal from any and all claims, liabilities, damages, expenses (including attorney’s fees and expert costs, penalties, fees, if any arising from enforcement of this Agreement and/or related to claims of infringement of copyrights or proprietary rights allegedly contained in the Article, or resulting from a claim of defamation, obscenity, or invasion of privacy based upon or arising out of the publication of the Article or any other breach of warranty as set forth in No. 1.