{"id":277430,"date":"2026-09-02T16:36:49","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T16:36:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/277430\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T16:36:49","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T16:36:49","slug":"city-in-lehigh-valley-ranked-as-most-challenging-place-to-live-with-asthma-in-continental-us-allentown-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/277430\/","title":{"rendered":"City in Lehigh Valley ranked as most challenging place to live with asthma in continental US | Allentown Area"},"content":{"rendered":"

ALLENTOWN, Pa. – A report has ranked Allentown as the #1 most challenging city to live with asthma.<\/p>\n

The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America released its report this week.<\/p>\n

AAFA said Allentown earned the top spot for the third\u00a0time in the last four years due to high asthma prevalence and a high number of asthma-related emergency department (ED) visits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

AAFA said it evaluates data for the 100 most-populated cities in the continental United States, based on metropolitan statistical data in the contiguous (\u201clower 48\u201d) states.<\/p>\n

MSAs are cities and their surrounding areas (like suburbs and nearby rural areas).<\/p>\n

Here’s the 2026 list of Top 10 Asthma Capitals (out of 100 cities ranked):<\/p>\n

1. Allentown, PA<\/p>\n

2. Detroit, MI<\/p>\n

3. Rochester, NY<\/p>\n

4. Philadelphia, PA<\/p>\n

5. Cleveland, OH<\/p>\n

6. Lakeland, FL<\/p>\n

7. Syracuse, NY<\/p>\n

8. Hartford, CT<\/p>\n

9. Charleston, SC<\/p>\n

10. Sacramento, CA<\/p>\n

AAFA said it publishes the Asthma Capitals\u00ae report<\/a>\u00a0to monitor\u00a0the nationwide impacts of asthma.<\/p>\n

The organization said asthma prevalence, asthma-related ED visits, and asthma-related mortality are the three factors driving the rankings.<\/p>\n

The outcomes are not weighted equally, AAFA said. The report also examines asthma risk factors that influence the outcomes.<\/p>\n

The organization said the report does not reflect:<\/p>\n

Cities and areas not in the top 100 list by population size.<\/p>\n

Completely rural areas that are not located\u00a0within a metropolitan statistical area.<\/p>\n

Anchorage, Alaska; Honolulu, Hawaii; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Navajo Nation Reservation; or Cherokee Nation Reservation, due to lack of matching data with other cities, counties, and states.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. – A report has ranked Allentown as the #1 most challenging city to live with asthma.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116229,119,121,120,30291,116228,2303],"class_list":["post-277430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-aafa","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-asthma","tag-asthma-capitals","tag-public-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}