University of Arizona College of Medicine, Tucson, Arizona

— -- It's a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak to you about asthma and allergy and the genes related to these diseases. Here at the University of Arizona, we have a long-standing commitment to understanding the causes of asthma and how we can better treat it.

Researchers in the Department of Pediatrics and the Arizona Respiratory Center have done some groundbreaking research understanding the development of asthma in early childhood. Indeed, one of the reasons we understand the predictors of asthma later in life is from a large study we've conducted with over 1200 children here over the last 27 years at the University of Arizona.

We've also been very involved in some large clinical research networks, funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases -- both key institutes with the National Institutes of Health. These studies have both helped us understand how to better treat asthma in children, as well as how to go into the environment in the inner city and try to improve this environment to improve outcomes.

As many of you may know, some of the worst outcomes in asthma occur in our urban environment, particularly in children and adolescents and young adults. And we've been central to a lot of the research trying to understand how this develops, working with groups from all over the country.

Most importantly, as all of you might expect, folks have moved to Arizona because of their asthma, and I can tell you we have just as bad asthma as anywhere else. We're trying to defeat it here at University of Arizona.