Skip Navigation LinksCaliforniaBreathingData

Top Menu
Left Menu

Environmental health Investigations branch

People in an office considering data on a laptop

​California Breathing​​​

Asthma Data

California Breathing analyzes asthma data from a variety of sources to better understand the burden of asthma in California. These data are summarized and made pub​licly available through infographics​ and various data tools including an interactive data dashboard and downloadable data sets. California Breathing aims to make asthma data informative to the public and its partners working to reduce asthma in California. ​​

​Asthma in California Infographic

View the printer-friendly version of Asthma in California Infographic (PDF).​​

lung icon

What is ​As​​thma?

​A serious lung ​​disease that makes it hard to breathe. With proper treatment, asthma can be controlled.

Asthma symptoms include:

  • ​Wheezing
  • Coughing
  • Shortness of breath
  • Chest tightness​​​​

How many people in California have asthma?

icon showing 1 in 7 people ​​​​1 in 7 Californ​ians​​ hav​e asthma​

​​​​Each year, asth​​ma causes:

​ambulance icon
145, 000 
emergency room visits​
​​hospital bed icon
15,000 
hospital stays​
​grave icon
364 
deaths​
​
​school icon
1 in 3 
children with asthma to miss schoo​l​​
​woking person icon
1 in 5 
adults with asthma to miss work​

​Asth​ma costs $1​4.5 ​billion per year including:​

​
hand holding bill and medical symbol​
me​​dical expe​n​​ses
​
​grave icon 
​premature deaths
​
school icon 
missed school days
​
​working person icon
missed work days

Source: California Health Interview Survey (2024); California Department of Health Care and Information (2024); California Department of Health Public Health Vital Records (2024); Nurmagambetov, Kuwahara, Garbe (2018) Annals of the American Thoracic Society 15: 348-356; Barnett, Nurmagambetov (2011) Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology 127: 145-152​

Data Tools and Resources​​

​Tracking California’s Data Explorer Tool​

Tracking CA Data Explorer Icon.jpg 

​​​Asthma Data in Tracking California’s Data Explorer Tool – Due to shrinking federal funds, California Breathin​g will no longer host the California Asthma Dashboard. California Breathing is partnering with Tracking California, a program of the Public Health Institute that mobilizes data to identify and understand pollution and disease, to provide asthma data through an interactive online data tool called the Data Explorer Tool​​. The Data Explorer Tool p​rovides the following county and zip code-level asthma measures: 

  • ​Asthma prevalence 
  • Asthma emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and insurers 
  • ​Asthma deaths 

​California Health and Human Services Open Data Portal 

CalHSS logo​​


Asthma data sets are available for download from the California Health and Human Services (CHHS) Open Data Portal. Download state- and county-level data on: 

Additional Data Resources

Additional asthma information is available from these sources:

  • CalEnviroScreen (emergency department visits by census tract)
  • AskCHIS (prevalence, work and school days missed, use of daily controller medication, and development of asthma action plan by county)
  • AskCHIS Neighborhood Edition (prevalence by zip code and other small geographic areas)

Custom Data Request

If you are seeking asthma data that are not available from any of the resources list above, please send your request to California.Breathing@cdph.ca.gov and we will contact you regarding the possibility of creating a customized data set. It is not always possible to fulfill custom requests, but each request will be considered.​

 CDPH Links
Page Last Updated :