Asthma Expert to Lead Children's Environmental Center

from Tribune-Review/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review ..

By Allison M Heinrichs

Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh has recruited a federal asthma researcher to lead its recently formed Pediatric Environmental Medicine Center, officials said today.

Dr. Fernando Holguin, previously director of Emory University's Asthma Translational Research rogram and pulmonologist and epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, will serve as the Children's center's clinical director.

He is charged with identifying Western Pennsylvania communities where asthma is most prevalent and studying environmental risk factors that impact asthma rates in those areas.

"Environmental risk factors that may affect asthma include everything from depression and obesity to secondhand smoke and air pollution exposure," Holguin said in a statement.

"Once we better identify which of these environmental risk factors are most prevalent, we will evaluate how the stressors are related to the severity and control of the patients' asthma," he said. "Then we can begin to develop education, prevention and treatment strategies that are sustainable in these communities."

The center is paid for by a five-year, $5 million grant Children's received from The Heinz Endowments in 2007.

Use of emergency services by children with asthma in Western Pennsylvania is 300 percent to 400 percent above the national average and asthma hospitalization rates for children are two to three times higher than recommended by recent studies, according to Children's.

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