Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Asthma is a prevalent chronic disease that makes a person often suffers difficulties in breathing. A common problem in improving asthma management is that patients from low-income families generally have poorer health and less access to health-care. Canada provides universal access to healthcare, but it is unclear how income affects the long-term health care costs of asthma. Hence, our study compared the differences in long-term health-care costs of asthma among patients with different income level. From the records of health-care for people in British Columbia between 1997 and 2013, we found 53,988 people aged between 18 and 45 years who newly had asthma, and another 53,988 people with the same age and sex but never had asthma. We then calculate how much they spent on health care during fifteen years after their first asthma diagnosis, including the costs of all hospitalizations, outpatient visits and medications. The asthma-related costs were the differences between the health-care expenses in asthma patients and those who do not have asthma. The income of these people was categorized into 5 levels based on the average family income level in their neighborhood at time of asthma diagnosis. Using regression methods, we compared asthma-related costs between people who lived in low-income areas and those who lived in high-income areas and calculated the differences. Our sample reported an average age of 33 years and sixty-one percent were women. In fifteen years, the average asthma patient who lives in the lowest income area needed to spend $19,772 (2013 CAD) on health care due to asthma, whereas that living in the highest income area only spent $13,585. The difference between the lowest and highest income level in the fifteen-year costs of asthma was $3,243. To conclude, low income level at asthma diagnosis contributes to higher health-care costs of asthma over the long term in Canada. Future studies should examine what types of health-care drives the disparity.