August 20, 2010     Kaiser Health News

Dr. Oxiris Barbot, a pediatrician who will be Baltimore's health commissioner starting Monday, has an up-close understanding of many of the city's public health challenges.

"I think my experience growing up," she says of her childhood in New York City's infamous South Bronx projects, "gave me a broader perspective on how important health is in communities that may not have the same level of resources as other communities."  

Baltimore is a prime example. The city fares worse than the rest of the state of Maryland and many parts of the country on almost every major health indicator, ranging from heart disease to asthma.

Barbot, a graduate of Yale University and the New Jersey Medical School, is especially concerned about workforce shortages in disadvantaged communities and regularly talks with medical, nursing and public health students in New York about alternative pathways to pursue a medical education.

Her resume includes stints with the National Health Service Corps and a community health center in Washington, D.C.  For the past seven years, she was the medical director of New York City's Office of School Health, where she helped develop an electronic medical records system for the city's more than one million students. She hopes to do the same for Baltimore's schools. Her first day is August 23.

KHN's Jessica Marcy recently spoke with Barbot about her ambitious plans, which include steps to address some of the gaps detailed in Baltimore's first-ever Health Disparities Report Card. For instance, the infant mortality rate for African-Americans is nearly twice as large as for white people while the HIV/AIDS rate is more than 10 times higher for black women than for white women.

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