New research suggests that children who live in inner-city neighborhoods are more likely to be hospitalized for common respiratory diseases.

Researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center found that kids who require hospitalization for several common respiratory illnesses tend to live in inner-city neighborhoods with less than optimal socioeconomic conditions.

This prompts researchers to believe that identifying these geographical areas could help doctors and hospitals predict which children are at greater risk of hospitalization and intervene, at a reduced cost, through patient- and population-level management of acute conditions.

Their study showed that the 20 percent of those most hospitalized with bronchiolitis had a hospitalization rate six times that of the 20 percent least hospitalized. The 20 percent of those most hospitalized with pneumonia had a hospitalization rate 11 times that of the 20 percent least hospitalized, according to Andrew Beck, lead author of the study.

"These inequalities were associated with underlying differences in socioeconomic measures and were clustered geographically, with hospitalization hot spots in the inner city and cold spots in outlying suburbs," Todd Florin, co-lead author of the study, said in a statement. "This has substantial clinical and public health implications, suggesting small areas that could be targets for prevention and cost containment."

For the study, researchers followed a 2013 Cincinnati Children's study of asthma hospitalization demonstrating that rates varied 18-fold across local neighborhoods. The study was based on children hospitalized for bronchiolitis or pneumonia at Cincinnati Children's between 2010 and 2013. Virtually all children in Hamilton County hospitalized for these conditions are admitted to Cincinnati Children's.

They found that those hospitalized with bronchiolitis were younger than 2 years old, and those with pneumonia were younger than 18 years old. Patients were identified using discharge diagnosis codes and then geocoded to their home census tract.

"Most of the inner city is a hot spot for bronchiolitis and pneumonia, including the neighborhoods of Price Hill, Over-the-Rhine, Fairmount, Avondale and Evanston," Beck said. "This is similar to what we found for asthma."

The findings are detailed in JAMA Pediatrics.