Socioeconomic Disparities’ Impact on Nutrition and Lung Health, with Lisa G. Wood, PhD

The American Thoracic Society (ATS) 2025 International Conference featured a session titled ‘Pediatric Year in Review,’ during which several talks were given by panelists such as Lisa G. Wood, PhD, who pointed to recent data on diet’s association with respiratory health outcomes.

Wood, who is known for her research at the Hunter Medical Research Institute (HMRI) and for her position as a University of Newcastle professor, recently gave an interview to HCPLive’s editorial team regarding her ATS talk. In this segment of her interview, Wood was asked whether, in the research shared during the meeting, socioeconomic and geographic disparities in nutrition appeared to influence the risk of developing conditions like asthma or wheezing in early childhood.

“It's just an unfortunate fact that people who are living in certain geographical areas, typically those that are of low socioeconomic status, the access to fresh and healthy foods is less,” Wood explained. “That really is a very unfortunate fact that we need to understand and look for strategies to try and overcome that limitation. So ultra-processed foods are one aspect. Another aspect that I talked about yesterday was a paper that was looking at the triglyceride glucose index, and that is a measure of metabolic dysfunction. This was another example of where a poor quality diet can be linked to worse respiratory health.”

Wood noted that this paper’s results suggested an association was present between a high triglyceride glucose index, suggesting metabolic impairment, and increased asthma risk. She further pointed to the commonly observed link between a high triglyceride glucose index and obesity.

“Getting back to your previous question about people at risk of these types of diseases, things like aspirin allergies, people in lower socioeconomic areas are more likely to be obese,” Wood said. “They're more likely to have problems with glucose metabolism, to have metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance, making them predisposed to asthma and allergies. So there are multiple ways where a poor quality diet can contribute to the development of asthma and allergy.”

Wood noted that she believes in prioritizing an examination of ways to ensure access to healthy, whole foods. Wood was later asked about any actionable recommendations for health care providers viewing her talk.

“I think that I would really like to see that pulmonologists actually prioritize nutrition for their patients,” Wood said. “Nutrition, as I mentioned, isn't automatically something that everybody links to respiratory health…I hope that the talk was able to reinforce the fact that it is very important for children to be eating healthily, to be maintaining a healthy weight, to focus their diet on whole foods, not processed, packaged foods, because all of these things will have an impact on their respiratory health.”

To find out more information on this topic, view Wood’s full interview segment above. For more on data presented at ATS, view our latest conference coverage.

The quotes used in this interview summary were edited for clarity.