The Contribution of Neighborhood Tree and Greenspace to Asthma Emergency Room Visits: An Application of Advanced Spatial Data in Los Angeles County.

Dohyung Kim,Yongjin Ahn

doi:10.3390/ijerph18073487

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the role of neighborhood tree and greenspace on asthma morbidity, especially asthma emergency room visits. We employed advanced spatial data which allow for precisely capturing both the quantity and the features of tree and greenspace within a neighborhood environment. The results from the spatial regression models in Los Angeles County revealed that the features of trees and greenspace, such as the configuration of the tree canopy, the level of tree clustering, and private neighborhood greenspaces contribute to decreasing asthma morbidity, in addition to the quantity of tree and greenspace acreages. Notably, however, large scale greenspace, such as golf courses, school playgrounds, and parks fails to reduce the number of asthma emergency room visits at the statistically significant level. These findings imply that the creation of dense or clustered tree patches and small-scale neighborhood greenspaces might play a substantial role in mitigating air quality and consequently reducing asthma emergency room visits.

Highlights

Asthma is one of highly prevalent health risks with a significant influence among the US population [1]
Prior to spatial regression modeling, this paper summarized the descriptive statistics for the variables (Table 2)
We offered an investigation of the role of neighborhood tree and greenspace, in terms of the area, configuration, and feature, on asthma patients

Summary

Introduction

Asthma is one of highly prevalent health risks with a significant influence among the US population [1]. While controlled asthma has a minimal impact on everyday life, 61.9% of adult asthma patients experience uncontrolled asthma with high frequency and intensity which can lead to a significant social and health cost [1]. These patients have an increased risk of an emergency department visit, hospitalization and work and school absenteeism. Given this clear connection between outdoor air quality and asthma morbidity, large volume of literature in environmental health research more related to asthma has paid attention to the important roles of greenspace in alleviating air pollutants [3,4,5,6,7]

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