Income inequalities have lead to a growing disparity throughout
Hamilton County, and its youngest citizens are paying the highest price.
A study between 2009 and 2011 showed children from disadvantaged
areas were 88 times more likely to go to the hospital for asthma than children
from higher income communities.
“We know mold and water damage are all bad for asthma and it makes
sense for children living in healthy homes to have less of an issue,” says Dr.
Robert Kahn, professor of pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical
Center and director of the Community Health Initiative.
As director of the CHI, Kahn is leading a team of physicians who
have partnered with community, school and government officials to collect
information about the conditions afflicting children in neighborhoods throughout
the county. The groundbreaking program hopes the information gathered will close
the growing disparities between low-income and high-income homes.
“We are all confident in knowing this disparity exists,” says
Kahn. “If we tolerate children living in a toxic environment, it’s a sad comment
on the future of our society.”
Dr. Mona Mansour is spearheading the asthma health initiative and
works with school nurses to pinpoint where asthma issues are the worst.
“A lot of what we learn from asthma is applicable to other
conditions,” says Mansour. “If you have poorly controlled asthma, odds are you
are less likely to seek care for other issues.”
Her responsibilities include partnering with legal agencies that
can leverage stubborn landlords into improving housing conditions that might
accelerate issues such as asthma. Their partnership with the Cincinnati Health
Department allows home inspections to address issues with the landlord and
pursue legal action if necessary.
Among the other initiatives, Kahn and other physicians have
reached out to first responders and police officers to address injuries and ways
of preventing common emergency room visits. Both Kahn and Mansour see the
methods becoming more prevalent in the future.
“The power is going to have to shift to the communities,” says
Kahn, who thinks the future will offer financial incentives to keep children out
of the emergency room.
“Right now hospitals get paid to admit people in the emergency
room,” he says. “We need to have incentives to not have children come to the
emergency room.”
Cincinnati Children’s is known throughout the world for its cancer
research, but the hospital’s initiative is one of the few in the country and the
only program of its kind in Cincinnati. However, Kahn is cautious about
bestowing any success on the program quite yet.
“Children’s Hospital has always focused on using the best methods
of quality improvements and starting small and working big,” he says. “We are
starting with a small focus and working community by community.”