LYNN — Armed with $350,000 in state money, Lynn and seven other communities are taking aim at reducing childhood asthma as a top goal for improving North Shore residents’ health over the next four years.
Lynn and Nahant exceed the state’s 10.8 percent rate for asthma among children, and local health directors like Peabody’s Sharon Cameron want to aim at indoor air quality, including allergy triggers like smoking and pests, to bring the rates down.
“Removing these factors could make a huge impact,” Cameron said Tuesday.
Dr. Edward Bailey said hospitalization rates for children are dropping, but the North Shore Medical Center pediatrics chairman called childhood asthma “a formidable problem nationally.”
“Kids shouldn’t be ill because they can’t evolve as normal kids and it interferes with learning,” Bailey said.
State officials track pediatric asthma incidence rates across Massachusetts and the most recent statistics available from the Department of Public Health recorded 163 pediatric asthma incidents among children in kindergarten through eighth grade in Lynn from 2007 to 2008.
Lynnfield recorded 164 incidents the same year, according to DPH statistics; Marblehead recorded 168 incidents; Nahant, 196; Peabody, 229; Revere, 248; Saugus, 262 and Swampscott 291.
Translated into prevalence percentages compared to city and town populations, Lynn and Nahant have rates exceeding 11 percent, and Saugus’ rate is 10.6 percent.
Swampscott Health Director Jeffrey Vaughan said pediatric asthma and obesity are priorities identified by state officials for action at the state and local levels.
But Vaughan and Lynn Health Director MaryAnn O’Connor said local health agents rarely have the time and personnel to tackle statewide health problems while achieving their “core mandate” responsibilities like conducting twice-yearly restaurant inspections.
“You’re talking over 500 permits and 1,000 inspections in Lynn alone,” O’Connor said.
Using the $350,000 provided by the state, O’Connor and her counterparts in the North Shore Shared Public Health Services Program will spend four years working together to improve how they do their basic jobs and launch campaigns against pediatric asthma and other major health risks.
“The goal is to work as a group so we’re not reinventing the wheel,” Vaughan said.
Cameron said ways to reduce childhood asthma include working with property owners and housing authorities to provide smoke-free apartments and eliminating pests, including rats and cockroaches – so-called allergy and asthma triggers.
“We could work together on educating parents and property owners about asthma and lifestyles choices to improve living standards. Consistency in how health programs are implemented is important, especially in attacking chronic diseases – including heart disease and diabetes: The message doesn’t change depending on what community you live in,” Cameron said.
Bailey said spending money to remove allergy triggers from older urban homes could reduce medical care costs for asthmatic children.
“We’ve done too little to make sure air quality is better in a significant number of homes where children are living: It’s a major issue,” he said.
Working with school nurses, Cameron and three coworkers handle daily health-related regulatory work in Peabody with its 52,000 population and respond to health complaints.
Vaughan works alone in Swampscott and said health directors in towns and cities handle responsibilities that were not part of their jobs 10 years ago, including emergency preparedness.
O’Connor said North Shore Program’s work will be coordinated by Salem health officials with programs developed by health directors, including ones in Nahant, Marblehead, Danvers and Beverly, getting under way in 2014.
“Everybody’s dealing with the same concerns,” O’Connor said.
Thor Jourgensen can be reached at [email protected].
