Dr. Brian Smedley delivers the keynote speech at the Urban Neighborhood Initiative Symposium in Kansas City, MO on October 4, 2012. This video can be found on Vimeo.

Good nutrition can be good business when it comes to providing healthy food options in low-income neighborhoods, according to a national health expert who spoke at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

In comments delivered Thursday, Brian Smedley cited a Pennsylvania tax-incentive program targeted to grocery store developers in areas where meal options are often limited to convenience stores and fast-food restaurants.

“Many of these stores (in Pennsylvania) have achieved a triple bottom line,” said Smedley, vice president and director of the Health Policy Institute of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C. “That’s why I’m so excited about the potential of these kinds of partnerships to leverage the existing good intentions of our business community and to help them do business in communities where they simply weren’t able to in the past.”

Smedley said Kansas City’s Urban Neighborhood Initiative (UNI) is exactly the type of community partnership that can make such strides.

Smedley’s keynote address came as leaders of the initiative unveiled their action plan to an audience of about 250 civic leaders, community activists, and government officials.


Read more at Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City.

After months of community meetings, city business leaders today presented a draft action plan for improving life in the Troost Avenue corridor.

The next step – implementing changes – will start in January in what advocates say is a unique public-private effort to change life between Troost and 71 Highway, 22nd Street to 52nd Street.

The action plan for the Urban Neighborhood Initiative (UNI) was presented today to about 250 community leaders, neighborhood advocates and business representatives at the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City.

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Brian Smedley, director of the Health Policy Institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C., praised the UNI effort in a recent speech and talked about the problems of racial and ethnic disparities.

Just in health care alone, he said, black and Hispanic people who live in poor areas get lifetimes of lower quality care than whites, resulting in millions of dollars in public health costs and millions more in lost worker productivity.


Read more at Midtown KC Post.

The Joint Center's Health Policy Institute held its second PLACE MATTERS National Health Equity Conference on September 5, 2012, at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, DC. Keynote speakers included Dr. Howard Frumkin of the University of Washington, Angela Glover Blackwell, Esq., of PolicyLink, and Geoffrey Canada of Harlem Children's Zone.

Geoffrey Canada, president and CEO of Harlem Children's Zone, delivers a keynote speech at the 2012 PLACE MATTERS National Conference in Washington, DC.

Dr. Howard Frumkin, Dean of the University of Washington School of Public Health, speaks on making healthy spaces at the PLACE MATTERS 2012 National Conference in Washington, DC.

Dr. Brian Smedley of the Joint Center's Health Policy Institute presents the results of a series of PLACE MATTERS community reports at the 2012 PLACE MATTERS National Conference in Washington, DC.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies Health Policy Institute and its PLACE MATTERS Initiative will convene a National Health Equity Conference in Washington on Wednesday, September 5, 2012, to spotlight effective community-based strategies that address all kinds of barriers to good health faced by low-income communities and communities of color.

The conference, with the theme “PLACE MATTERS: Models of Action, Innovation & Collaboration”  will assemble key stakeholders, including grassroots leaders, elected officials, researchers, public health practitioners, policymakers and community organizers.  It will take place at the Renaissance Hotel, 999 Ninth Street NW, Washington.

Download the full press release below.

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 its Place Matters Teams  are pleased to add to the existing knowledge base with this report, Place Matters for Health: 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 summary of our analyses of the social, economic, and environmental conditions that exist in selected PLACE MATTERS communities and documents their relationship to the health status of residents of these communities.

The overall pattern in our series of Community Health Equity Reports, as this summary makes clear, 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 to helping remedy them.  

Through our PLACE MATTERS initiative, which is generously supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, we are working with leaders in 24 communities around the country to identify and address social, economic, and environmental conditions that shape health.  We look forward to continuing to work with leaders these and other communities to ensure that every child, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or place of residence, can enjoy the opportunity to live a healthy, safe, and productive life.

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 is pleased to add to the existing knowledge base with this report, Place Matters for Health in Bernalillo County: Ensuring Opportunities for Good Health for All, A Report on Health Inequities in Bernalillo County, New Mexico.  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 Bernalillo 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 to helping remedy them.  

Through our PLACE MATTERS initiative, which is generously supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, we are working with leaders in 24 communities around the country to identify and address social, economic, and environmental conditions that shape health.  We look forward to continuing to work with leaders in Bernalillo County and other communities to ensure that every child, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or place of residence, can enjoy the opportunity to live a healthy, safe, and productive life.

Our full report is available for download below. English- and Spanish-language executive summaries and an informational brochure are also available.