Surveys show people in neighborhoods hit hard by health disparities are full of ideas of how to solve them—at a time when the healthcare system is embracing some experimentation. Will the brainstorming and bucks meet?
For families living in poor neighborhoods, more hospital closings have put greater pressure on the surviving facilities, and they have also stretched the distances people have to travel to receive care.
Diabetes and assaults, HIV and asthma, sicken or kill people in low-income areas at higher rates. Often, it isn’t that there’s no method or money to address the problem – it’s that we spend it in the wrong place.
The question isn’t whether economic alienation and housing pressure are as risky to health as smoking or poor diet. It’s whether the political will is there to do something about it.