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Major
Business Administration
Anticipated Graduation Year
2021
Access Type
Open Access
Abstract
Chicago’s Air Quality is ranked one of the worst in the nation and seems to recently be worsening, therefore looking at how air quality and other factors may impact asthma hospitalizations is important to help policy makers or groups find ways to mitigate the negative health effects. The purpose of this study is to investigate the connection between urban population demographics of Chicago neighborhoods with their coinciding asthma hospitalization rates. Using a cluster analysis, this study analyzed demographics of the 77 Chicago neighborhoods in 2010 along with their rates of hospitalization, air quality scores, and pollution burden scores, in order to create 5 distinct clusters that were each unique in their own way. The land usage in the neighborhoods was found to play little to no role in predicting a higher rate of hospitalizations; while for the most part, air quality score, percentage of black population, and income level had somewhat of a significance in regard to higher rates of hospitalizations. Clusters 1 and 2 were the most direct in their relationship of poor air quality with larger rates of hospitalizations. Comparatively, Cluster 4 was surprisingly almost the opposite in which poor air quality was linked to low hospitalizations. This study does not show any definitive link between land usage or pollution burden and higher rates of asthma hospitalizations but shows a slight link between other factors such as race or income percentages as well as the air quality and health index percentile. Further studies are needed to establish a greater understanding for the neighborhoods in Cluster 4, as well as updated data sources with more reliable data collection to validate the research.
Faculty Mentors & Instructors
Professor Carolyn Kmet
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Chicago Neighborhoods Demographic Data and Asthma Hospitalizations Clustered
Chicago’s Air Quality is ranked one of the worst in the nation and seems to recently be worsening, therefore looking at how air quality and other factors may impact asthma hospitalizations is important to help policy makers or groups find ways to mitigate the negative health effects. The purpose of this study is to investigate the connection between urban population demographics of Chicago neighborhoods with their coinciding asthma hospitalization rates. Using a cluster analysis, this study analyzed demographics of the 77 Chicago neighborhoods in 2010 along with their rates of hospitalization, air quality scores, and pollution burden scores, in order to create 5 distinct clusters that were each unique in their own way. The land usage in the neighborhoods was found to play little to no role in predicting a higher rate of hospitalizations; while for the most part, air quality score, percentage of black population, and income level had somewhat of a significance in regard to higher rates of hospitalizations. Clusters 1 and 2 were the most direct in their relationship of poor air quality with larger rates of hospitalizations. Comparatively, Cluster 4 was surprisingly almost the opposite in which poor air quality was linked to low hospitalizations. This study does not show any definitive link between land usage or pollution burden and higher rates of asthma hospitalizations but shows a slight link between other factors such as race or income percentages as well as the air quality and health index percentile. Further studies are needed to establish a greater understanding for the neighborhoods in Cluster 4, as well as updated data sources with more reliable data collection to validate the research.