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Title: Exploring age-adjusted rates of emergency department visits for asthma and asthma percentiles among cities with the highest rates and percentiles in San Diego County, respectively.

Subtitle: A dashboard for the general public and, more specifically, the health department of San Diego County and its residents.

Data Source: CalEnviroScreen 4.0.

Background: Data from the CalEnviroScreen 4.0 or the “California Communities Environmental Health Screening Tool” was used for the creation of the following two graphs. This data was released in 2021. My research question is, “What cities in San Diego County have the highest rates of asthma emergency room visits as well as the highest percentiles of asthma?” Asthma is a disease that affects your lungs causing wheezing and breathlessness and can be triggered by environmental factors (CDC). According to the CDC, there were 939,000 emergency room visits with asthma as the primary reason for the visit in 2021 (CDC/National Center for Health Statistics). This data is important, especially for the local health department of San Diego County, as it can assist in targeting cities to focus efforts and/or interventions to address asthma and improve health outcomes.

Results: In Graph #1, you can see the top 5 cities with the highest rates of emergency department visits for asthma in San Diego County. These cities are: Bostonia, La Presa, Imperial Beach, Lemon Grove, and National City. National City has the highest rate with an average rate of 71 among all cities in San Diego County. The second highest was Lemon Grove with an average rate of 70. Graph #2 displays the top 5 cities with the highest percentiles of asthma in San Diego County which correspond to the cities mentioned previously. Lemon Grove had one of the highest percentiles of 85.43% as compared to the others. La Presa, Lemon Grove, and National City had 1 outlier each and National City had the smallest percentile value of 25.44%. Both these graphs show that these could be the top two cities that San Diego County’s Department of Public Health can look into focusing efforts for asthma interventions such as education and performing an environmental assessment for these areas to determine strategies for alleviating environmental triggers.

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Asthma & The Environment in San Diego County

As mentioned, asthma can be triggered by environmental factors that an individual can be exposed to in their everyday lives. Identifying and addressing these factors can be a step forward in reducing and eliminating asthma triggers and improve respiratory outcomes. Using the same data source (CalEnviroScreen 4.0), we can explore the relationship of pollution burden and asthma among the 5 cities in San Diego County with highest rates of ED visits for asthma and asthma percentiles. As you can see in Graph #3, we see a slight upwards trend for the association of asthma and pollution. This information is important as it can prompt public health officials to further explore environmental factors that could exacerbate asthma rates in San Diego County.