With over 20.3 million asthmatics in the United States,
of these about 9 million children,
asthma is no longer a problem which can be ignored. 

It is:
      The leading chronic (long term) illness in children.

   Annually, nationwide there are over:
      10.4 million physician visits
      2 million emergency room visits
      14 million school days missed 
      1.9 billion dollars spent on treatment

Seven percent of all children are afflicted.
The asthma epidemic is most severe in lower income and minority families and there is higher frequency in boys than girls. 
Asthma causes nearly 5,500 deaths nationwide each year, twice the amount of two decades ago, and in children, deaths have quadrupled in the same period of time.
In Riverside County there were about 258,000 people diagnosed with asthma in Riverside County (according to the 2005 California Health Interview Survey UCLA Center for Health Policy Research).  The cost for treatment in our county is over 8 million dollars.

Asthma related deaths,
have also increased dramatically. 

In 1979 there were a total of 2,603 asthma related deaths and in 1999 there were 5,434. Asthma related deaths in children nearly quadrupled in about the same amount of time, from 54 in 1977 to 191 in 1976.

Additional Resource:
The Positive Impact of Conducting Asthma Home Visits and Establishing Asthma Clinical Systems - Statistics on asthma in Riverside County; information on our program, goals and accomplishments (31 pages, PDF, 2MB)