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.

Johnny and Sally both attend the same private high school in Chicago. But when the final bell rings, Johnny goes home to the predominantly African-American East Garfield Park community on the west side of the city. Sally usually takes the train back home to Lincoln Park, a predominantly white area on the north side of town.

Both sets of parents make the same total household income and agree that they give their kids the same opportunities in life. But while they’re seemingly awarded the same opportunities, the reality is that one of these fictitious characters is expected to die 12 years earlier than the other, simply because of where he lives.

A recent study shows that the differences in neighborhood conditions strongly predict who will be healthy, who will be sick, and who will live longer, independent of income. The Washington, D.C.-based Joint Center for Political and Economic Study released Thursday a report that examines how social and economic conditions in Cook County are linked to poor health outcomes.

Read more at The Grio.

Chicago has remained one of the most segregated cities in America, as this map from a new report on the intersection of place, race and health in the Second City indicates. On it, each blue dot represents 500 whites (as captured in the America Community Survey between 2005-2009), while each purple dot the same number of blacks. Yellow represents the city’s Hispanics and green the Asian population (that green concentration right in the middle of the city is Chinatown).

The map, produced by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, is most noteworthy for the pattern it establishes that repeats itself throughout a number of other indicators about life in Chicago.

Read more at The Atlantic Cities.

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.