Two major asthma epidemiology reports today from CDC. The National Center for Health Statistics released the latest data brief analyzing trends in asthma prevalence, health care utilization and mortality in the US from 2001-2010. Most of the news is not good: Prevalence rates of asthma have reached 8.4 percent, the highest ever recorded in the [...]
Interview with RWJF Human Capital Blog
Last week I spoke with Matt Freeman, one of the editors of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Human Capital Blog, about the development of Asthmapolis and where we’re headed as a company. The conversation is posted here.
Questionnaire layout and wording influence prevalence and risk estimates of respiratory symptoms in a population cohort
One of the more interesting aspects of asthma epidemiology is the challenge of identifying who in a population has the disease. By and large, asthma remains a clinical diagnosis, made on the basis of a characteristic history of symptoms, occasionally supported by physiological measurement. Without a discrete clinical test, epidemiologists have to rely on proxy [...]
Crossing paths with James Crow, the geneticist (1916-2012)
Jim Crow, a pioneer and legend in the field of population genetics, and an influential and widely loved faculty member here at the University of Wisconsin, died last week at the age of 95. John Hawkes has a fantastic profile of him here, while his faculty page at the UW Laboratory of Genetics faculty testifies to his seemingly [...]
CDC releases National Asthma Control Program state profiles
CDC has set up a new page collecting short (two-page) burden of disease profiles from the 36 National Asthma Control Program grantee states across the US. These summaries highlight key statistical data, such as prevalence and health care use in adults and children, as well as data on patient education and medication use from the [...]
Parents misperceive asthma control in kids
The rise of asthma control and impairment as the main indicators of management has renewed interest in a longstanding challenge: Variability in the perception and experience of asthma symptoms. Parents and children have been shown to differ in their assessments of the existence of asthma, let alone the presence or severity of specific symptoms. And [...]
GE Healthymagination profile of Asthmapolis
The GE Healthymagination blog has an article up today about Asthmapolis that features photos of our new sensor. While you’re there, be sure to check out their great visualization projects (like the Breast Cancer Conversation) and read and recommend some of the entries submitted to their $100m challenge targeting innovation in breast cancer.
Q&A with The Commonwealth Fund
I recently spoke with Sarah Klein from The Commonwealth Fund, one of the leading private foundations focused on healthcare research and quality. Our Q&A – about Asthmapolis and the potential of mobile technology to improve the quality of care and public health – is published in their Quality Matters newsletter this month. Read more » [...]
Global Asthma Report 2011
Worldwide, 235 million people have asthma. Although effective treatment is available, many people with asthma, especially in low- and middle-income countries, are unable to access or afford it. A new report, and accompanying website, released today by the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union) and the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in [...]
Race, socioeconomic status and lung function
For the last two years, John Mullahy and Sheryl Magzamen and I have been working on an analysis of the apparent racial differences in normal lung function and the contribution of socioeconomic status to those patterns. Our goal was to investigate whether alternative statistical methods (quantile regression) might better illustrate the effects of educational achievement [...]
About
Medical anthropologist, asthma epidemiologist in Madison, WI. Co-Founder of Reciprocal Labs and Asthmapolis.
