Health effects of socially toxic neighborhoods: the violence and urban asthma paradigm.

Asthma outcomes are clearly socially patterned with asthma ranking as a leading cause of health disparities among minority and low socioeconomic groups. Yet, the increasing prevalence and marked disparities in asthma remain largely unexplained by known risk factors. These marginalized individuals may also live in communities that are increasingly socially toxic, which may be related to increased psychosocial stress that also con-tributes to asthma morbidity. This article focuses on violence exposure as a useful paradigm to understand how chronic social stressors may influence asthma expression.