Asthma is a long-term lung disease that can begin at any age. It's one of the most common long-term diseases in children. The Missouri Environmental Public Health Tracking (EPHT) Program provides data on emergency department and hospital visits for asthma in Missouri.
What is Asthma?
Asthma is a long-term lung disease that can make it hard to breathe. An asthma attack happens the muscles around the airways to tighten and the lining of the air passages swell (or become inflamed). There is no cure for asthma, but there are ways to control it. One way is to avoid triggers in the environment that can make asthma worse.
Environmental triggers include cigarette smoke, air pollution, and things that cause allergies, like pet hair, dust mites, cockroach allergens, and pollen and mold. Asthma symptoms can also be caused by lung infections, exercise, cold air, stress, and allergies to food or medicine.
To learn more about asthma, visit Asthma Prevention and Control.
Asthma Data
The Missouri EPHT Program provides data on emergency department and hospital visits for asthma. You can search the data by age, sex, race, and ethnicity.
Missouri EPHT - Asthma Query
Search this query to find:
Annual numbers of emergency department visits and hospitalizations
Annual crude rates of emergency department visits and hospitalizations, per 10,000 residents
Annual age-adjusted rates of emergency department visits and hospitalizations, per 10,000 residents
Other Data Sources
Other data sources share additional data on asthma, including data on the number of people diagnosed and living with asthma.
- Missouri Information for Community Assessment (MICA) - Chronic Disease Query
- Missouri County Level Study
- CDC - National EPHT Data Explorer
Using the Data
Asthma data can help you:
- See if some communities or populations are at increased risk of asthma
- See if asthma is going up or down over time
- Direct resources for preventing and controlling asthma
- See progress towards lowering asthma risks