Latino children/Morguefile
The National Center of Complementary and Alternative Medicine has just awarded a $2.5 million grant to the College of Nursing and Health Innovation at Arizona State University in Phoenix. The five-year grant will provide monies for research to investigate why different types of asthma occur in children in different populations of the Latino community.
Asthma in Latino children
For reasons not yet determined, there are significant discrepancies between Mexican-American and Puerto Rican children when it comes to asthma. Asthma affects about 33 Puerto Rican children for every two non-Latino white children. According to a study presented at the American Public Health Association Annual Meeting in Washington DC in 2007, Hispanic children are 1.4 to 2.3 times more likely to have severe asthma than non-Hispanic children.
Puerto Rican children tend to have more prevalent and more severe cases of asthma, while Mexican children have fewer cases that are less severe. One reason for the differences may be because the parents in these two cultures react very differently to conventional Western medicine. The study resulting from this grant will investigate this possibility.
Asthma study
The study will be conducted at two sites, one at a clinic in Phoenix and another in the Bronx, New York. It is the first study to make a distinction between the Mexican-American and Puerto Rican populations to determine why children respond differently to asthma.
The investigators will be evaluating the interaction of characteristics, cultural beliefs, and factors of experience, the social and environmental context in which the children live, and the availability of health care. They also will consider how and why parents make certain treatment decisions regarding their choices among conventional and alternative and complimentary medicine options.
Recruitment for the study in the Phoenix area will begin in April 2010, and the investigators hope to have study results available by 2013. For more information, visit the College of Nursing and Health Innovation at Arizona State University.
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