The average life expectancy for people in certain parts of New Orleans is just 54 years, according to a new report, meaning that residents there have about the same prospects as people in sub-Saharan African nations such as Cameroon and Angola. In other sections of town, people can expect to live an average of 80 years, putting them in the company of wealthier countries such as New Zealand and the Netherlands.

Along with life expectancy, the report by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and the Orleans PLACE MATTERS initiative analyzes public health across a wide range of measures, ranging from heart disease to violent crime, and maps the results by ZIP code.

The results are sobering.

Read more at the Times-Picayune.

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 the Orleans Parish PLACE MATTERS team are very pleased to add to the existing knowledge base with this report, Place Matters for Health in Orleans Parish: 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 Orleans Parish and documents their relationship to the health status of the Parish’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. Among the study’s key findings are that life expectancy in the Parish varies by as much as 25 years depending on the zip code. Zip codes with the lowest life expectancy tend to have a higher percentage of people of color and low-income residents. Community-level risk factors, such as high concentrations of people living in poverty, overcrowded households, households without a vehicle, and vacant housing are among the factors that predict health inequalities in the Parish.

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.

Download the summary here or the full report below.

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.
 

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The 95819 and 95817 ZIP codes, which encompass much of east Sacramento and Oak Park, respectively, share a border. Each has about 15,000 residents. But an analysis performed by the nonprofit Valley Vision on behalf of local hospitals in 2010 showed that Oak Park residents are more than three times as likely to go to the emergency room for asthma, diabetes or high blood pressure.

The report provides a comprehensive analysis of how neighborhood differences in a range of social, economic and environmmental conditions are linked to health outcomes in the San Joaquin Valley. It finds that the conditions in low-income and non-white neighborhoods make it more difficut for people in these neighborhoods to live healthy lives.

This is a summary. The full report is here.

The report provides a comprehensive analysis of how neighborhood differences in a range of social, economic and environmmental conditions are linked to health outcomes in the San Joaquin Valley. It finds that the conditions in low-income and non-white neighborhoods make it more difficut for people in these neighborhoods to live healthy lives.

This is a Spanish language summary. The full report is here.

The report provides a comprehensive analysis of how neighborhood differences in a range of social, economic and environmmental conditions are linked to health outcomes in the San Joaquin Valley. It finds that the conditions in low-income and non-white neighborhoods make it more difficut for people in these neighborhoods to live healthy lives.

A summary document is also available in English or Spanish.

In a study released this week, two Manhattan Institute researchers heralded the “end of the segregated century.” Harvard professor Edward Glaeser and Duke professor Jacob Vigdor showed that African American segregation levels have now declined to their lowest point since 1920, just after the beginning of the “Great Migration” of rural sharecroppers from the South to Northern industrial metropolitan regions.

From 2010 Census data, professors Glaeser and Vigdor calculate changes in what sociologists term “dissimilarity indices.” They find a national dissimilarity (or segregation) rate of about 55 percent for African Americans—in other words, “only” 55 percent of African Americans would now have to move to neighborhoods with more non-blacks in order to evenly distribute the black population throughout all neighborhoods in their metropolitan areas. This is a substantial decline from the segregation level of about 80 percent in 1970.

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Another recent study of census data published by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies finds that over 20 percent of all African Americans now live in “high poverty” neighborhoods, unchanged from 2000. More than 40 percent of poor African Americans now live in high-poverty neighborhoods, compared to 15 percent of poor whites who live in such neighborhoods. Poor blacks are therefore nearly three times as likely to be “truly disadvantaged” as poor whites. (The Joint Center defines a “high poverty” neighborhood as one where 30 percent or more of the residents have incomes below the poverty line, but this definition can be misleading: The poverty line is very low, and neighborhoods with poverty rates of greater than 30 percent also inevitably house large numbers of residents whose incomes are barely above the poverty line, and whom most would also consider to be severely economically disadvantaged.)


Read more at the Economic Policy Institute.

An overview of the Joint Center's PLACE MATTERS program.

The Boston Public Health Commission reports on the work of the Boston PLACE MATTERS team. This presentation was given during the 2011 PLACE MATTERS National Conference.

Slides can be downloaded by clicking the link below.