Something is killing America's urban poor, but this is no ordinary epidemic. When diseases like AIDS, measles and polio strike, everyone's symptoms look more or less the same, but not in this case. It is as if the aging process in people like Beverly and Monica were accelerated. Even teenagers are afflicted with numerous health problems, including asthma, diabetes and high blood pressure. Poor urban blacks have the worst health of any ethnic group in America, with the possible exception of Native Americans. Some poor urban Hispanics suffer disproportionately from many health problems, too, although the groups that arrived most recently, like Dominicans, seem to be healthier, on average, than Puerto Ricans who have lived in the United States for many years. It makes you wonder whether there is something deadly in the American experience of urban poverty itself.I felt that Epstein's article was pertinent to both last week's unit and the upcoming one, since poor public health in urban areas was an issue before the housing crisis (when the article was written) and continues to be one to this day. I would love to know if there has been a correlation between the number of home foreclosures and the number of diagnosed chronic diseases in the United States. (But then again, that number probably wouldn't be that accurate since people who can't afford their mortgage probably can't afford health insurance. Oh, America.)
Monday, April 11, 2011
Enough to Make You Sick?
Those interested in epidimiology and urban economics should check out this article by Helen Epstein which was published in the New York Times in 2003. Epstein argues that the living conditions in urban areas are killing the people who live there. She states that deaths among the urban poor are not directly caused by common conclusions such as violence, malnutrition or extreme poverty - they are caused by a multitude of factors that can be attributed to one's living environment. Here is a sample from the article:
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If anyone is interested in reading more about social epidemiology, I would suggest reading this report by the W.H.O. and researchers Wilkinson and Marmot. The full report is available at this link http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=QDFzqNZZHLMC&oi=fnd&pg=PA5&dq=social+determinants+of+health+the+solid+facts&ots=xTnGjBVRlx&sig=JxPuhP5zhcCadeNC7W0YPIPzWeQ#v=onepage&q&f=false.
ReplyDeleteI like this report in particular because it gives specific policy recommendations that can help improve the negative health outcomes described.
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ReplyDeleteIn Hispanic Health and Disease class last spring we went over the problem of plummeting health status for Hispanic immigrants within the US after either 15 years or one generation. Some of the causes are pretty obvious: poor diet from eating fast food constantly, lack of exercise, hazardous jobs and housing- many of the same issues that affect all inner city urban residents. The most interesting thesis to me was also that these people were leaving very stable and interconnected social and family groups and moving to a place where they were far more isolated in their new urban home, and even when they maintained diet and exercise and even jobs as the same as the place they came from, this still seemed to have a measurably adverse affect on long-term health.
ReplyDeleteI think this a shocking article that illustrates the the substandard living conditions that many people live in to this day. I feel that we have advanced enough as a society in this country to where everyone should have a basic standard of living that allows them to remain at the very least healthy.
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