Results of a Recent Study

Study Finds Baltimore Children who moved from High-Poverty to Low-Poverty Areas had Improved Asthma

The health of Baltimore children with asthma in a subsidized program assisting them to move from high-poverty to low-poverty neighborhoods significantly improved, according to a study just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The children experienced fewer asthma attacks after moving and had symptoms on fewer days. These were improvements on par with medication used to treat the chronic condition, said Dr. Craig Pollack, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Hopkins School of Nursing and a lead author of the study.

Asthma constricts airways in the lungs and causes wheezing, chest tightness, coughing, and trouble breathing. It affects 13.7% of adults in Baltimore compared to 9% across the state and country. About a third of Baltimore high school students have been told by a doctor or nurse that they have asthma, compared to about a fourth statewide. The city also has the highest rate of emergency department visits due to asthma in Maryland. Nationwide, Black children are two to three times more likely to have asthma than white children, and have more than twice the risk for emergency department visits and hospitalizations because of the disease, according to the study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study found that a major reason why children’s asthma got better after their families moved was because their new neighborhoods had fewer stressors. “Housing mobility programs that help families overcome the barriers to moving can also impact health,” Dr. Pollack said. “As policymakers and practitioners are thinking about the cost of these programs, they should consider the health benefits as well.”

Dr. Corinne Keet, a professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and another author on the study, commented "Anyone living in Baltimore understands the impact of violence and poverty on people’s health,” she said. “I mean, it’s pervasive.”

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Sources: Angela Roberts, "Study: Baltimore children moved from high-poverty to low-poverty areas saw their asthma improve," Baltimore Sun, May 16, 2023.

Baltimore's Role in Civil Rights History Discussed in New Book

Review of Book about Baltimore's Civil Rights History

Amy Nathan's just-published Round and Round Together: Taking a Merry-Go-Round Ride into the Civil Rights Movement (The Nautilus Series) (Paul Dry Books, 2011).

This book is, according to Kirkus Reviews, "A snapshot of the civil-rights movement in one city provides insight into the important role of individual communities as change moved through the country... a case study of how citizens of one city both precipitated and responded to the whirlwind of social change around them." 

The city is Baltimore, and the book entertainingly chronicles the integration battles at Gwynn Oak, Kresge's, etc. Jacques Kelly has a very interesting article on this in The Baltimore Sun. You can read it here. If you want to buy the book, Amazon has it, among many others.