It is becoming abundantly clear that the opponents of President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act care little about minority health.

David Bositis, senior research director for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, has observed in the {Washington Post} that about 36 percent of African Americans have no health insurance (compared to approximately 12 percent of Caucasians).

“Because Americans of Color suffer from hypertension, diabetes and cancer at twice the rates of Caucasians,” he notes, “insurance companies, when permitted to do so, exclude us more often from coverage.”

“I wonder,” Mr. Bositis asks rhetorically, “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 Afro.

As a result of the racial and economic segregation of Cook County neighborhoods, life expectancy varies along neighborhood lines, according to a study by The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. The study found that residents of neighborhoods with an annual median income above $53,000 live almost 14 years longer than those with median incomes below $25,000.

Those with lower income tend to live in less safe neighborhoods with less access to fresh food and quality health care. Of course the segregation splits the city in half. The census statistics also showed that more than a quarter of Cook County census tracts have experienced persistent poverty, "meaning that at least 20% of households have been in poverty for two decades.

Read more at Chicagoist.

It’s been well documented that in the U.S. poverty helps fuels poor health — obesity, HIV/AIDS, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other chronic illnesses. And that makes sense, given that more money means better access to quality health care and the ability to afford healthier foods and obtain a gym membership to work out.

But a recent study conducted about people living in Cook County, Illinois, suggests that income doesn’t always explain racial health disparities. According to the report Place Matters for Health in Cook County: Ensuring Opportunities for Good Health for All, researchers from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Study in Washingtonn D.C. found that where you live, especially if your area is racially segregated, is a pretty good predictor of how healthy you will be and how long will you live.

Read more at BET.

Residential segregation has increased by income in 27 out of 30 of America’s major metropolises, according to an analysis conducted by the Pew Research Center.

The analysis finds that 28% of lower-income households in 2010 were located in a majority lower-income census tract, up from 23% in 1980, and that 18% of upper- income households were located in a majority upper-income census tract, up from 9% in 1980.

At the same time, middle income neighborhoods across the U.S. shrank as income inequalities grew.

Despite these trends, neighborhood segregation by income did not outpace that of race segregation, which remains one of the most pervasive residential segregation determinants.

Of all segregated U.S. cities, it’s likely that Chicago reigns supreme, and those differences translate into life and death inequalities.

As The Atlantic highlights a new report by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which found that people living in Chicago neighborhoods with a median annual income higher than $53,000 have a life expectancy almost 14 years longer than those living in Chicago communities with average median incomes below $25,000. In Chicago, those with the lowest income are also minorities. The city’s historic segregation of income and race thus serve as proxies for health outcomes in life.

Read more at Smithsonian.com.

We’ve written about how Chicago’s high murder rate is a legacy of segregation. But it’s not just dangerous to live in a poor neighborhood. According to a new study by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, it’s also unhealthy. The study looked at the differences in life expectancies between people in, say, Old Town and people in West Garfield Park. Even though the neighborhoods are only a few miles apart, the differences in life expectancy are as severe as the differences between First World and Third World countries.

Read more at NBC5 Chicago.

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.

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.

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.