The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and the Orleans Parish, LA, Place Matters team today released a report documenting how neighborhood social and economic conditions in New Orleans powerfully shape racial and ethnic health inequities in the city.

Place Matters for Health in Orleans Parish: Ensuring Opportunities for Good Health for All finds that residents’ zip codes are an important indicator of the health and health risks.  Importantly, because of persistent racial and class segregation, place of residence is an especially important driver of the poorer health outcomes of the city’s non-white and low-income residents.

The report, prepared by the Joint Center and the Orleans Parish Place Matters team in conjunction with the Center for Human Needs at Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia Network for Geospatial Health Research, was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) of the National Institutes of Health.   The study provides a comprehensive analysis of the range of social, economic and environmental conditions in New Orleans – which is the only municipal jurisdiction in the parish – and documents their relationship to the health status of the city’s residents.