A Harlem Hospital study is producing an alarming finding: as
many as one in four children in Harlem have asthma. Only halfway
through an ambitious effort to test every child within a
24-block area, doctors expected to find rates higher than the
national average of 6 percent, perhaps even percentages
approaching the high teens, but nothing reaching these heights.
A studyof Philadelphia school children actually produced similar
numbers a few years ago, but the children were never examined by
doctors. Instead, over 5000 5th and 6th graders were shown a
video that dramatized various asthma symptoms and they were
asked if they had ever experienced these symptoms or had been
told they had asthma: 25 percent said they had, but it was never
documented. Indications were present here in New York that the
situation was bad even a decade ago when hospitalization
discharge records for children treated for asthma were four
times higher than the national average. But the Asthma
Initiative is the first documented study in th