Dr. Linda Rae Murray, Chief Medical Officer for the Cook County Deparment of Public Health, asked me to think about the department as though I was a plant. Two plants, she said, can get the same amount of sunlight and the same amount of rain, but if one is growing in nutrient-rich soil and the other is growing in poor soil, they’re not going to grow the same.

Place Matters: Cook County is a study recently published by the Health Policy Institute aimed at discerning which neighborhoods would be the rich soil in this metaphor and which would be nutrient-poor. It’s the first study of its kind, according to Dr. Murray, that goes into such a small gradient with this data. What they found is that in some neighborhoods in Cook County, where you live can take up to as many as ten years off of your life.

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The central finding of Place Matters: Cook County — that segregation leads to poverty which leads to poor health which shortens life spans — is probably not surprising to anyone. The study is an essential tool for those advocating for greater health equity, a mission that the World Health Organization made central to its goals in 2008. “Poor health is no fault of the individuals that live in these communities,” said Dr. Brian Smedley of the Health Policy Institute.

Read more at WBEZ.