Yonsu Kim (Healthcare Administration and Policy), Ji Won Yoo (Internal Medicine), Chris Cochran (Healthcare Administration and Policy), and Sheniz Moonie (Epidemiology and Biostatistics) published an article "Dynamic associations of neighborhood social and physical environment with ED visits for asthma: A spatial change score analysis" in Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: Global.

The authors assessed the variations in neighborhood environmental, socioeconomic, and demographic characteristics to investigate the census tracts in Los Angeles County where emergency department (ED) visits for asthma increased and identified PM_2.5 as a neighborhood environmental risk factor for asthma. However, little evidence was found for the beneficial effect of improved neighborhood socioeconomic status. The findings underscore that, in the short term, reducing traffic emissions may contribute more to lowering the burden of asthma-related health care use than improving neighborhoods’ socioeconomic status.