In Merced County, approximately 39,000 children and adults have been diagnosed with asthma.

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County Profile Indicators

• Lifetime Asthma Prevalence
• Active Asthma Prevalence
• Work-Related Asthma
• Asthma Management Plans
• Asthma Risk Factors
• Emergency Deptartment Visits
• Asthma Hospitalizations
• Asthma Disparities
• Asthma Deaths
• Healthy People 2010
• Hospitalization Rates Over Time
• Outdoor Air Quality¹⁵
• Notes

Notes

1. PI = Pacific Islander; Please see technical notes for more information on race/ethnicity categorizations.
2. Lifetime asthma prevalence is the proportion of people in the population who have ever been diagnosed with asthma by a health provider.
3. The 95% confidence interval (CI) is a range that expresses a level of certainty about an estimate based on the margin of error.
   The 95% CI means that we are 95 percent confident that this range contains the true population percent. A narrow CI means that there is less variability in the estimate and/or there is a larger sample size. A wide CI indicates more variability and/or a smaller sample size.
4. Active asthma prevalence is the proportion of people in the population who have ever been diagnosed with asthma by a health provider and report that they still have asthma and/or report that they had an episode or attack within the past 12 months.
5. Work-related asthma is asthma that is caused or triggered by conditions or substances in the workplace.
6. Balmes J, Becklake M, Blanc P, et al. Environmental and Occupational Health Assembly, American Thoracic Society. American Thoracic Society Statement: Occupational Contribution to the Burden of Airway Disease. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2003;167:787-797; Lutzker L, Rafferty A, Brunner W, et al. Prevalence of Work-related Asthma in Michigan, Minnesota, and Oregon. Journal of Asthma. 2010;47:156-161.
7. Obesity is defined as a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or greater.
8. Data Sources for Asthma Risk Factors: Smoking — CHIS, 2009; Obesity — CHIS, 2009; Poverty Level — American Community Survey, 2007-2009; Unemployment Rate — State of California Employment Development Department, 2009
9. An asthma death is a death where asthma was indicated as the underlying cause on the death certificate. The rate of asthma deaths is the number of deaths per 1,000,000 residents, age-adjusted to the 2000 U.S. population.
10. An asthma ED visit is an admission to a licensed ED in California with the primary diagnosis of asthma. The rate of asthma ED visits is the number of visits per 10,000 residents, age-adjusted to the 2000 U.S. population.
11. Population denominators for rates are from the California Department of Finance. All rates are age-adjusted to the 2000 U.S. population. Age-adjusted rates are modified to eliminate the effect of different age distributions in different populations. Rates based on numbers <20 are not reported.
12. An asthma hospitalization is a discharge from a licensed acute care hospital in California with the primary diagnosis of asthma. The rate of asthma hospitalizations is the number of hospitalizations per 10,000 residents, age-adjusted to the 2000 U.S. population.
13. Charges for asthma hospitalizations are the only type of data available to assess the costs of asthma in California counties. However, there are many other costs associated with asthma, including other types of health care utilization, medications, and indirect costs due to factors such as school and work missed.
14. Healthy People 2010 (HP2010) is a set of national benchmarks for a wide range of health topics, including asthma. For more information on HP2010, visit www.healthypeople.gov.
15. Outdoor air quality data—including exposures such as PM2.5, PM10, ozone, and traffic pollution—can be found online through the California Environmental Health Tracking Program’s Air Quality Data Query or on the California Air Resources Board website.

Further details about the data presented in this report can be found in the accompanying Technical Notes document.