The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and the Cook County, IL, PLACE MATTERS team today released a report documenting how neighborhood social and economic conditions in Cook County shape racial and ethnic health inequities in the city.

The report, Place Matters for Health in Cook County:  Ensuring Opportunities for Good Health for All, finds that the location of a person’s residence is an important indicator of his or her health and health risks.  Additionally, because of persistent racial and class segregation in Cook County, where one lives is an especially important driver of the poorer health outcomes of the county’s non-white and low-income residents.
 

PLACE MATTERS for health in important ways, according to a growing body of research. Differences in neighborhood conditions powerfully predict who is healthy, who is sick, and who lives longer. And because of patterns of residential segregation, these differences are the fundamental causes of health inequities among different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and Cook County, IL, PLACE MATTERS team are very pleased to add to the existing knowledge base with this report, Place Matters for Health in Cook County: Ensuring Opportunities for Good Health for All. The report, supported by a grant from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) of the National Institutes of Health and written in conjunction with the Center on Human Needs at the Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia Network for Geospatial Health Research, provides a comprehensive analysis of the range of social, economic, and environmental conditions in Cook County and documents their relationship to the health status of the county’s residents.

The study finds that social, economic, and environmental conditions in low-income and non-white neighborhoods make it more difficult for people in these neighborhoods to live healthy lives.

The overall pattern in this report – and those of others that the Joint Center has conducted with other PLACE MATTERS communities – suggests that we need to tackle the structures and systems that create and perpetuate inequality to fully close racial and ethnic health gaps. Accordingly, because the Joint Center seeks not only to document these inequities, we are committed helping remedy them.

The report is available for download below. English-language and Spanish-language versions of our executive summary are also available.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies' Health Policy Institute and its PLACE MATTERS initiative will hold it's second Action Lab in Cook County, Illinois from July 25 to July 27, 2012. This gathering of PLACE MATTERS communities will build upon concept papers from PLACE MATTERS design labs, support the Cook County PLACE MATTERS team, and examine community issues related to health outcomes such as racism, violence, and poverty.

Registration for the Cook County Action Lab is closed. Those who wish to learn more can read the Lab agenda, the Lab concept paper, and the HPI PLACE MATTERS page.

GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney has said only one thing about the Affordable Care Act. It must go and on day one of his administration if elected he will start the ball rolling to repeal it. The Supreme Court may well save him from this braggadocio, vote pandering boast if the four ultra-conservatives justices joined by the court's swing vote, Anthony Kennedy, get their way. They have given every hint that they will scrap the law.

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The majority of black uninsured are far more likely than the one in four whites who are uninsured to experience problems getting treatment at a hospital or clinic. This has devastating health and public policy consequences. According to a study by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, blacks are far more likely than whites to suffer higher rates of catastrophic illness and disease, and are much less likely to obtain basic drugs, tests, preventive screenings and surgeries. They are more likely to recover slower from illness, and they die much younger.

Read more at OpEdNews.

There are recent changes in how you are registered at a hospital. These changes are based on years of research with the goal being improved care for all. It is good to be prepared, so here is a bit of background information. The Institute of Medicine (IOM)'s landmark report "Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care" (2002) identified that access, quality, delivery and outcomes of health care are lower for racial/ethnic minorities and those with limited language proficiency. According to the 2008 National Healthcare Disparities Report (AHRQ), racial/ethnic disparities refer to differences in the quality of health care received by members of different racial/ethnic groups that are not explained by other factors. Specifically, research identified that health care disparities are responsible for certain groups being less likely to receive cancer screening, appropriate cardiac care, transplants, most effective RA medicines, hip and knee replacements, and effective pain management. According to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies (2009), racial health disparities in infant mortality, chronic disease and many other metrics cost the U.S. health system more than $57 billion a year.

Read more at The Huffington Post.

A new study by Virginia Commonwealth University Center on Human Needs researchers shows that lack of education has deep impact on the health and crime rate of a community.

In collaboration with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies Health Policy Institute and the Virginia Network for Geospatial Health Research, the VCU Center on Human Needs is releasing the second of eight studies assessing population health inequities and related social and economic conditions in urban and rural communities across the United States. Working alongside the project partners are eight “Place Matters” teams consisting of individuals who work and live in each of the communities studied.

The second report examines health disparities for the city of New Orleans. The city is still recovering from the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina seven years ago, and areas that are repopulating are experiencing shifting trends in both health and crime.

Read more at Phys.org.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) represents a significant advancement in the effort to repair the deeply broken U.S. healthcare system and promote equitable opportunities for good health for all. As long as its provisions are fully funded by Congress, the law will improve access to health insurance for more than 32 million Americans, prevent insurance companies from cherry-picking enrollees and denying claims because of pre-existing conditions, and incentivize more health-care providers to work in medically underserved communities. These are among the benefits that the law is already providing, in addition to what is expected as provisions of the ACA come into force over the next two years.

Read more at CNBC, Yahoo News, the Sacramento Bee, and Marketwatch.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act means that many people of color will see expanded access to healthcare, including those in underserved urban communities gaining increased prevention care. In a column for TheGrio.com, Dr. Brian D. Smedley, vice president at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, notes that under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) minorities, who are more likely to live in segregated and impoverished conditions, can expect to get help with services that reduce health risks.

Read more at Diverse: Issues in Higher Education.

President Obama has written millions of seniors, working poor, middle class Americans and African Americans a prescription for longer and healthier lives. The Supreme Court has sanctioned the heart of the president’s 2010 Affordable Care Act. But the angry crowd from the right wants to tear it up.

What the naysayers don’t understand is that the Affordable Care Act is not just about politics. It’s about life and death.

The Affordable Care Act expands health-care coverage for low-income Americans. It enables everyone to receive recommended preventive services at no cost and expands community-based primary and preventive care. It prevents insurance companies from refusing to cover those with pre-existing conditions, and it enables young adults to continue receiving health insurance coverage through their parents until age 26.

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David Bositis, senior research director for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, says about 36 percent of African Americans have no health insurance vs. 12 percent of whites. Because blacks suffer from hypertension, diabetes and cancer at virtually double the rates of whites, insurance companies would often “cherry pick,” or exclude those with medical problems.

Bositis asked, “I wonder why those who are fighting this law do not care about the high death rate and high rates of the illnesses of black Americans?”


Read more at The Washington Post.

Thursday's Supreme Court ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act solidified both presidential campaigns' health-care talking points, with President Barack Obama's supporters encouraged by an election-year victory and Mitt Romney's backers more determined than ever to repeal "ObamaCare."

While the decision itself is momentous, it doesn't change what either campaign is likely to say about health care policy in America, some observers said.

"The court's decision today to uphold the Affordable Care Act means that health care will probably remain a secondary issue in the upcoming election," said Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

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"It helps Obama," said David A. Bositis, senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington think tank focused on issues affecting people of color.

Bositis said if the Obama campaign is smart, it will use popular provisions of the bill in its political advertising.


Read more at Scripps Howard News Service.