Link Between Housing Code Violations and Asthma Morbidity Informs Better Care, Improved Outcomes
Community housing code enforcement agencies collect and own critical data about the presence of mold or cockroaches that can help pediatricians identify clusters of asthma-related morbidity among children and better target care for children with asthma.
The critical role played by housing agency data is identified in a November 2014 Health Affairs study by Andrew Beck, MD, MPH, of the Division of General and Community Pediatrics, and the Virginia-based Project HOPE: The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc.
Geo-mapping tools helped Beck and his team identify a link between the density of housing code violations – reports that logged the presence of mold or cockroaches, both of which are known asthma triggers – and asthma morbidity, based on asthma-related emergency department visits and hospitalizations.
Independent of poverty, code violation density explained 22 percent of the variation in asthma utilization rates across the areas studied. Children who had been hospitalized for asthma had an 84 percent increased chance of returning to the emergency department or being rehospitalized within 12 months if they lived in areas with the highest rates of housing code violations, compared to children living in low-density areas for violations.
Beck’s study involved 4,355 children, ages 1 to 16, who were hospitalized or received emergency room treatment for asthma at Cincinnati Children’s over nearly four years.
“Integrating housing and health data could highlight at-risk areas and patients for targeted interventions,” says Beck.
Housing data also could be used to study health disparities that occur in small geographic areas, identify medically at-risk areas for programs to improve housing conditions, incorporate into patients’ electronic health records for improved clinical care, or inform health systems’ strategies in support of preventive medicine and accountable care.
