Old Problem, New Solution
Once a month Sonia Diaz says she would take her sixteen-year old daughter, Kassandra Rodriguez, to the hospital due to asthma. “It sounded like a whistle in her chest, she would start wheezing, and sometimes she couldn’t breathe,” says Diaz, 41, a mother of two.
Along with her daughter, Diaz, and her son, Nicholas, 19, all suffer from asthma.
As residents of East Harlem, Diaz’s family health problems are not unusual.
In East Harlem the rate of hospitalization for asthma in children 0-14 years of age is doubled compared to children overall in New York City. According to the NYC Department of Health in 2005, for every five children who were hospitalized for asthma in New York City, over ten children were hospitalized for asthma in East Harlem.