Jennifer Couceyro, Advanced Registered Nurses Practitioner with Baptist Children’s Hospital, explains the diagnosis of asthma does take time. “It’s not a one-time illness diagnosis, it’s over a period of time; when you’ve had repeated exacerbations of this reactive airway condition it’s when someone will finally coin the child as having asthma,” she says.

She also highlights the environment plays a lot in the role of asthma, because a lot of asthma symptoms can be based on allergies and inflammation, so living situations (like dust) are a big contributing factor to asthma.