ACAAI 2023: Language Barriers Exacerbate Health Disparities in Pediatric Allergy Diagnosis
Non-English-speaking children half as likely as English speakers to be diagnosed with asthma
FRIDAY, Nov. 17, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- Language barriers may contribute to the underdiagnosis of common allergy and immunology conditions in children, according to a study presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, held from Nov. 9 to 13 in Anaheim, California.
Hao Tseng, M.D., and Maria-Anna Vastardi, M.D., from SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn, New York, sought to understand to what extent language barriers exacerbate health disparities for allergy and immunology diagnoses. They conducted a retrospective review of electronic health records from all patients at a primary pediatric care clinic who were younger than 18 years and received care from July 1, 2020, to April 30, 2023.
Of 16,517 patients included in the review, 14.8 percent indicated a language preference other than English. In this subgroup, the researchers found the following diagnoses were less common than among those who preferred English: food allergy (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 0.51; 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 0.24 to 1.10), asthma (aOR, 0.42; 95 percent CI, 0.28 to 0.63), eczema (aOR, 0.69; 95 percent CI, 0.49 to 0.96), allergic rhinitis (aOR, 0.54; 95 percent CI, 0.30 to 0.96), and penicillin allergy (aOR, 0.51; 95 percent CI, 0.27 to 0.96). Non-English-speaking children were also less likely to have a routine health examination that resulted in abnormal findings (aOR, 0.80; 95 percent CI, 0.67 to 0.94).
“Among children with a language preference other than English, the diagnosis of asthma was less than half as common, eczema was about two-thirds as common, and allergic rhinitis was slightly more than half as common when compared with children whose preferred language was English,” Tseng said in a press release.
“Our study suggests that language barriers may contribute to the underdiagnosis of common allergy and immunology conditions and underscores the importance of providing appropriate support in this area,” the authors write.
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