Screening for asthma in Cantonese-speaking immigrant children.
BACKGROUND
Asthma prevalence among Chinese immigrant children is poorly understood and attempts to screen these children have produced varied outcomes. We sought to learn how to improve screening for asthma in Chinese immigrant children.


METHODS
Children (n = 152) were administered the Brief Pediatric Asthma Screen in either Cantonese or English, they then viewed and reacted to a video showing people wheezing and subsequently took a pulmonary function test.


RESULTS
The diagnosed asthma prevalence for our study population was 27.0%, with another 5.3% having possible undiagnosed asthma. Very few children had spirometry findings below normal. In multivariate analysis, being native born (p = 0.002) and having a family history of asthma (p = 0.003) were statistically associated with diagnosis of asthma. After viewing the video, 35.6% of respondents indicated that the images differed from their conception of wheezing. Of four translations of the word "wheeze" no single word was chosen by a majority.


CONCLUSIONS
Our findings suggest that asthma diagnoses are higher for Chinese children who were born in the US suggesting that desegregation of data might reveal at risk subpopulations. Care needs to be taken when diagnosing asthma for Cantonese speakers because of the centrality of the word wheeze and the challenges of translation.
Greenfield
Robyn O
RO
Department of Public Health and Family Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, USA. robyn.greenfield@tufts.edu
Lee
Angela C
AC
Tang
Roland
R
Brugge
Doug
D
D000293:Adolescent; D001213:Asian / Q000193:education / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D001249:Asthma / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000208:ethnology; D001900:Boston / Q000453:epidemiology; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002681:China / Q000208:ethnology; D004641:Emigration and Immigration; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D015995:Prevalence; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012923:Social Class; D013147:Spirometry / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014504:Urban Health / Q000706:statistics & numerical data