Children and Minorities Slower to Adopt Asthma Inhalers

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- New research shows during the first years after asthma inhalers came out, they were significantly less likely to be prescribed for children and minorities.  

The study from the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute for Health Policy in Boston studied how health care disparities change over time. It shows the introduction of a new technology differs among racial, ethnic or other groups.

"Some factors behind these disparities might be the greater access non-minority patients usually have to specialists, who are more likely to use new technologies, and the higher cost of new medications, which makes them less accessible to the poor and underinsured," says Timothy Ferris, M.D., of the MGH Institute for Health Policy, the article's lead author.

Researchers analyzed 3,671 physician visits by asthma patients from 1989 to 1998. During the first two years, they found minority patients were less than half as likely to receive inhaled steroid medications as were non-minority patients. By the mid-1990s the overall difference between minority and non-minority patients resolved. While there was increased use among blacks, however, the low rate of prescription for Hispanics remained virtually unchanged. Children were also significantly less likely than adults to receive inhaled steroid medications.

More studies looking at the factors underlying these and other disparities are underway at the Disparities Solutions Center in the MGH Institute for Health Policy.

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SOURCE: Medical Care, 2006;44:001-006