The State of Opportunity

A Guaranteed Right to Health: The Key to Presidential Greatness

President-elect Barack Obama has renewed our hope as Americans that the promise of opportunity is revitalized, alive and well. But in order to secure his own legacy as the first great president of the 21st Century, and one of the greats in American history, he will need a grand undertaking equivalent to Abraham Lincoln's saving of the Union or Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Amidst the current economic downturn, it would appear clear what the momentous challenge and chance for long-lived admiration will be for an Obama Administration, and it is health care.  Not small bore reforms of existing programs or expansions around the margins of the popular State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) or Medicare, but a truly revolutionary sea change in the compact that the American government and their people share in relation to the health of the populace. As Steve Coll of The New Yorker comments:

The next Presidency has within its reach at least two generation-spanning causes: the need to jump-start a new energy economy, and, in so doing, help to contain climate change; and the need to enact a plan to provide quality health care to all Americans, and, in so doing, complete the project of social insurance that Roosevelt described in 1935. Each of these projects is urgent, but it is health-care reform that speaks more directly to the economic and human dimensions of the present downturn.

The accumulating failures in the country’s health-care system are a cause of profound weakness in the American economy; unaddressed, this weakness will exacerbate the coming recession and crimp its aftermath. A large number of the country’s housing foreclosures in recent years appear to be related to medical problems and health-care expenses. American businesses often can’t afford to hire as many employees as they would like because of rising health-insurance costs; employees often can’t afford to quit to chase their better-mousetrap dreams because they can’t risk going without coverage. Add to this the system’s moral failings: about twenty-two thousand people die in this country annually because they lack health insurance. That is more than the number of Americans who are murdered in a year.

As my health law professor once said, it is inaccurate to call what we have in the United States currently a "health care system," as there is nothing systematic or logically organized about it; it is, rather, more accurate to call what we have the "health care industry." And therein lies a core, fundamental problem with the way that many Americans are pushed into thinking and talking about their health care; it is common in the advocacy, policy, and newsmaker worlds to hear about "health care consumers." Health care, as one participant in the presidential town hall debate commented, is often thought of as a commodity in this country. But this is not a cheeseburger or a new raincoat that we are talking about; this is our health, the key to our economic security and ability to access the American Dream of boundless opportunity that President-elect Obama represents. Health, as President-elect Obama and the great lion of the Senate, Ted Kennedy, have both stated, is a fundamental right of Americans.

Without a guarantee to our right to health care, and the opportunity for good health that follows, many Americans are in danger of losing their jobs, and as Coll points out and as I have pointed out here before, their homes (up to 7 out of 10 foreclosures are caused in part by medical crises). Surely, if human rights apply as much here in the United States as much as it does abroad, the human right to the opportunity to meet the most basic needs for ourselves and our families--housing, feeding, and clothing ourselves--must be guaranteed. This is not only about 46 million uninsured Americans who cannot afford to purchase health care as "consumers," or about the 25 million underinsured Americans who, despite paying premiums, are at constant risk of bankruptcy should catastrophe or tragedy strike. This is about health writ large: the health of our American community, the health of the American economy, and, not the least of all, the health of the American Dream.

And, as it turns out, this is also about the health of the Obama legacy, and whether in that pantheon of the great American presidents, his name and memory will join the likes of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt.

Rights and Wrongs on Health Care

In the second presidential debate, moderator Tom Brokaw asked the candidates whether health care is a privilege, a responsibility, or a right. John McCain answered privilege, while Barack Obama said that health care is a right. With nearly 46 million Americans uninsured, and millions more unable to meet their medical expenses despite having insurance, the notion of an American right to health care seems far from today’s reality. But a human right to health care is deeply rooted in our national history and values, and is broadly supported by the American people. It is an idea whose time has come.

After leading our country out of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt voiced the connection between health care and the Founding Fathers’ vision of inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In his 1944 State of the Union address, Roosevelt explained that Americans have come to embrace a “second bill of rights” alongside the civil liberties set out in the Constitution. Those rights, FDR declared, include “the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.”

Four years later, the US played a leading role in creating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration states that "everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including … medical care and necessary social services."

With the onset of the Cold War, the US shied away from applying economic human rights like the right to health care here at home. But some states have tried to keep the idea alive. New York State’s Constitution recognizes a right to systems that protect public health. And just this year, Connecticut passed legislation declaring that “equal enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is a human right and a priority of the state.”

A national opinion survey conducted by The Opportunity Agenda last year shows overwhelming public support for the idea that health care is a right. When asked whether access to health care should be considered a human right, a whopping 89% of Americans said yes, with 72% “strongly” holding that view.

For Americans, the right to health care is not only about personal health and economic security, but also about our shared values as a nation, including fairness, dignity, and opportunity for all. When asked why they support human rights, Americans’ most popular responses are “because it is important to treat people fairly and with dignity,” and “because America was founded on Thomas Jefferson’s belief that we all have rights that no government should take away.”

What would it mean for our nation to treat health care as a right instead of merely a privilege or solely a responsibility? Protecting the right to health care is less about the means of delivery than it is about results for everyday people. It means that any approach must realistically guarantee all Americans affordable, quality care, irrespective of where they live, what their health history is, what job they have, or whether they get laid off. It means that, unlike in our current system, the racial background of patients and neighborhoods should not influence the siting of hospitals and clinics, or the quality of care. And it means that neither insurance companies, nor HMOs, nor government bureaucrats get to decide whether Americans can get basic, necessary care.

To be sure, protecting the right to health care will require financial investment and sacrifice. But that investment will pay off many times over down the road. We’ll save lives among the 18,000 Americans who die every year for lack of health coverage. We’ll stave off bankruptcies from among the half of filings that stem from medical expenses. And we’ll save countless dollars as families who get preventative care avoid costly emergency room visits.

The 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is just 6 weeks away, on December 10, a month after Election Day. That’s a perfect time for a new president and Congress to renew our human rights legacy by guaranteeing affordable, quality health care for all.

Cross posted at OurFuture.org

Framing to Win: Health Care is "a Right for Every American"

Are we "consuming" health care or realizing our "rights?"  The American public is ready for a new conversation; in fact, the conversation has already begun.  Are you speaking the right language to be a part of this new discussion?

In the second presidential debate last evening, Tom Brokaw asked of the two candidates a follow-up question, stemming from one woman's question of whether health care should be treated as a commodity.  Both candidates demurred from the initial inquiry, but Brokaw pressed them on his own follow-up: "Is health care in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?"  What caused many of us who have been following both campaigns and their proposed health care policies to sit up in our seats was Sen. Obama's answer, "Well, I think it should be a right for every American."  The reason to take notice isn't that a politician answered a question directly, impressive though that is, but the much more important reason is the re-framing of an issue long discussed on both sides as a consumer good.

Talking about health care and the opportunity for good health as a right, rather than a commodity, privilege, or responsibility, is something that advocates have shied away from, for a myriad of reasons.  But poll after poll, we find that most Americans far and near all believe that health care is a right, with a majority holding health care to be a human right.  Nationally, 72 percent of Americans strongly believe that health care "should be considered a human right.”  In New York state, fully 89 percent of New Yorkers believe that health care should be a right for all New Yorkers, with 70 percent believing that the government (federal, 41%; state and local, 28%) “mainly responsible for ensuring that everyone in New York gets the health care that they need.”  Likewise, over 90 percent of Connecticut residents believe that everyone in the state deserves a right to health care.

And now, in the midst of both a presidential election and a financial crisis, we have yet more evidence that the "right to health care" language works.  During the debate, the now-infamous CNN focus group armed with real-time dial rating tools found that the line describing health care as "a right for every American" was one of his strongest of the evening.  As reported by Alternet, “When Obama discussed health care as a right for all Americans, his numbers were through the roof. At one point, female respondents were dialing in at 100 percent approval.”

If that, along with all of the previous polling, is not enough to convince you that now is the time to start talking about health care as a right, consider that the financial crisis, and the loss of Americans' economic security, itself stems from health care concerns, something I wrote about last week.  But this week I give you a fresh example: a new article in Health Matrix, a scholarly health journal, reports that medical crises (and the resulting bills) are a cause of up to 7 out of 10 of all home foreclosures:

Our evidence suggests that medical disruptions are a major contributor to mortgage default, often striking in combination with other factors. Half of all respondents (49%) indicated that their foreclosure was caused in part by a medical problem, including illness or injuries (32%), unmanageable medical bills (23%), lost work due to a medical problem (27%), or caring for sick family members (14%). We also examined objective indicia of medical disruptions in the previous two years, including those respondents paying more than $2,000 of medical bills out of pocket (37%), those losing two or more weeks of work because of injury or illness (30%), those currently disabled and unable to work (8%), and those who used their home equity to pay medical bills (13%). Altogether, we found that about 7 in 10 of our respondents either self-reported a medical cause of foreclosure, or experienced one of these indicia of medical disruptions in the years before foreclosure.

Approaching health as a human right is powerful because it reflects our, and the American public’s values.  It is also preferable to using a consumer approach for a number of reasons.  When health is framed as a consumer good that each of us must purchase at market rates, we reinforce a competitive, individualistic mindset, and suggest that people who lack quality health care are simply poor economic competitors.  In terms of the current home foreclosure crisis, this plays into the right-wing frame that the crisis is the fault of irresponsible borrowers, a far cry from the reality where most homeowners facing foreclosure have been struck by family medical misfortune or catastrophe.   Building broad, winning support for equal access to quality health care and for addressing health disparities requires a new frame of health care as a common resource that’s stronger and fairer when we’re all in it together:  a system that works for everyone when everyone’s included and that is our right to expect and demand.

The Promise of Opportunity

Taking another look at "New Progressive Voices," a collection of essays outlining a new long-term, progressive vision for America, today we turn to our Executive Director, Alan Jenkins', contribution.

The piece paints a bleak picture.  Alan outlines many of the problems facing regular Americans today.  Many people are having trouble getting a job that pays a living wage, paying for health care, and getting their children into quality schools.  Tying this together with the present high rates of incarceration, all signs point to a general lack of opportunity in America.

In keeping with goals of this essay collection Alan's essay, "The Promise of Opportunity," strives to give concrete solutions to these communal ills.  Alan's essay suggests making "opportunity" a metric by which to consider the viability of federal programs.

As with the environmental impact statements currently required under the National Environmental Policy Act, the relevant agency would require the submission of information and collect and analyze relevant data to determine the positive and negative impacts of the proposed federally funded project. Here, however, the inquiry would focus on the ways in which the project would expand or constrict opportunity in affected geographic areas and whether the project would promote equal opportunity or deepen patterns of inequality.

While the measures of opportunity would differ in different circumstances, the inquiry would typically include whether the project would create or eliminate jobs, expand or constrict access to health care services, schools, and nutritious food stores, foster or extinguish affordable housing and small business development. At the same time, [these Opportunity Impact Statements (OIS)] would assess the equity of the project's burdens and benefits, such as whether it would serve a diversity of underserved populations, create jobs accessible to the affected regions, serve diverse linguistic and cultural communities, balance necessary health and safety burdens fairly across neighborhoods, and foster integration over segregation.

To read the full article, click here.

What's AIG got that your child doesn't?

If you've watched a news show, listened to the radio, picked up a newspaper or even just watched The Daily Show this week, you know that Wall Street is in trouble.  Years of irresponsible speculation and reckless lending policies--including the targeting of subprime mortgages in America's most vulnerable communities--have contributed to the threat of bankruptcy of some of the biggest names in banking and insurance.  Bear Sterns.  Fannie Mae.  Freddie Mac.  Lehman Brothers.  Merrill Lynch.  AIG.  You may not have heard of all of them before, but chances are that you've heard of one of them, and the chances are even bigger that they have, somewhere along the road, been involved in your own financial situation, whether it is as an investor in the bank that lent you your mortgage or as the manager of your 401(k) or pension.  Long story short, this is really big news with potentially huge impacts on every sector of American life and the economy.  And as big news, the reporters are covering it, just as they're also covering the fact that the Federal Reserve, an independent government agency entrusted with managing America's monetary policy (mainly through deciding interest rates), has bailed out a few of these large investment banks to the tune of over $300 billion.

I'm no economist, but the economists who are talking about these bailouts right now generally appear to believe that they are necessary.  The fabric of the American economy is so interwoven that we cannot simply allow major segments of our community to fail without repercussions for the rest of us.  Undoubtedly, there should be reprecussions for bad behavior, and the current critiques of the lack of accountability for these banks and their managers are very persuasive.  Just as America cannot succeed without broad support of the common good, it cannot succeed without accountability, transparency, or justice.  Responsibility in America cannot just be to ourselves (or our stockholders), it must be to each other as well.

Of course, this interconnectedness isn't only true for large investment banks; this is true for all of us, from the largest to the smallest.  That's why it's disappointing to see that as the Federal Reserve takes action to keep our financial sector in one piece, our elected official in Congress and the Administration are not providing parallel support to American families and children.  Apparently frozen until next year is consideration of expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which provides access to health care for about 7 million children.  One of the most successful government programs, the Children's Health Insurance Program has reduced the number of uninsured children by around 3 million, and, as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, is credited for helping with the reduction of the number and percentage of uninsured from 2006 to 2007.  Similarly, we've yet to see a federal response to the

So my question is, what's AIG got that your child doesn't?  True, this isn't exactly comparing apples to apples; the Federal Reserve's independence allows it to act in ways that are more difficult for Congress and the Administration.  Nonetheless, the social contract of America which has made this country strong is one of mutual security, the guarantee that our elected officials will work to insure our ability to provide for the health, food, education and other basic needs of our families, neighborhoods, and communities.  Almost a century ago, when financial crisis also created hardship for Americans across the country, the government responded not with bailouts, but with a program of hope and support, a set of policies that did not seek to provide for American's basic needs, but rather to assist us all, as families and as a national community, to get back on our feet.  Legacies of those policies live on today, responding to high fuel prices with the Low Income Home Energy Assistance program and to skyrocketing food prices with the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program for mothers and their children, the Commodity Supplemental Food Program for senior citizens, and the Emergency Food Assistance Program that supports food banks.  At only a fraction of the cost of the recent investment bank bailouts, there is an opportunity for our elected representatives to not only guarantee and uphold the core American value of economic and community security, but to help stimulate the economy as well.

Labor Day Health Blog

In lieu of the regular Monday Health Blog Round-Up, I'd like to take a moment to reflect on our observation of Labor Day yesterday, and how the history of the holiday reflects upon our current health care crisis.

Labor Day was first conceived of in 1882 by the Central Labor Union of New York City, a coalition of trade unionists who later joined with the American Federation of Labor.  But it was not until twelve years later, on June 28, 1894, that Congress made Labor Day a national holiday, eventually adopted by all 50 states.  What was the catalyst for the "day off for the working man," and how is all of this related to our current health care crisis?  What follows below is a discussion of the key national values mobility, security, opportunity, and how government can (but sometimes fails to) defend the American Dream.

The catalyst, it turns out, may sound somewhat familiar.  Irresponsible speculation by banks encouraged over-development by speculators, creating an economic bubble.  When the bubble burst, thousands of businesses and hundreds of banks lost everything, resulting in a massive recession where unemployment skyrocketed and many American families wondered about how to make ends meet for the most basic of necessities.  After massive protests (some ending violently) subsumed the industrial centers of the Midwest, Congress felt a need to act, and Labor Day, in recognition of the contributions of working families, was what they came up with.

Now, Labor Day is a fine holiday; I enjoyed it myself by making a chuck roast that turned out wonderfully.  But the history that bears some worrying parallels to our current economic conditions (a downturn as result of over-speculation by banks and developers, though housing in our case rather than railroads) brings up some questions about how we view labor (with a small "l") in this country.  America is based in the core ideal that when folks work hard, not only should they be able to barely make ends meet, they should have the opportunity to advance and fully participate in the social, economic and political.  Put another way, this is the promise of Mobility, the element of the American Dream that says not only should we ensure that the lives of the next generation is better than our own, but we must make sure that our institutions allow for all of us in our own lifetimes to pursue a better life for ourselves, our families, and our community.  A poor economic environment should not be an excuse for the government to fail to stand up and protect this right; the government has, at its best moments in history, defended the American value of mobility, by creating more jobs, by helping those who have fallen on the hardest times get back on their feet, by helping communities to find new paths in new economies through government-aided infrastructure and supportive programs.

The role of the government is to appease unrest with another national holiday; it is to provide Security.  I don't mean security in the sense of having a strong national defense and valuable alliances and partners abroad, though that is important as well; this sense of security is that we, our families, and our communities are entitled, as part of the social contract of the United States, to be secure in our health, our homes, our most basic human needs that afford us our most invaluable human dignity.  And here we find the roots of the answer to the second part of my question above, as to how the history of Labor Day relates to health care.

By any measure, Congress's response to the labor protests of May 1894 was inadequate.  A holiday didn't change the fundamental inequities of the new economy; it didn't reduce unemployment (the highest estimate being 18.4%), create new jobs, or protect Americans struggling to survive despite working hard to build the new infrastructure of our country.  "The Panic of 1893" that had precipitated the events of 1894 had been preceded two decades earlier by "The Panic of 1873," and would be followed by The Great Depression of the 1930s.  In these cases, the government had seen the problem before, knew that Americans required their assistance to fulfill the dream of opportunity, security, and mobility, but failed to act.  It was only after a government that recognized the American promise to aid our neighbors and to strengthen our national community acted to create jobs and programs to assist those hardest hit to recover that the nation once again began moving in the right direction.

And so, we finally come to health care.  There is a crisis in America, only partly due to the recent bursting of the housing and real estate bubble, but a problem that has been underlying for quite some time.  Almost 46 million Americans are uninsured, and 25 million Americans are underinsured, meaning that despite having insurance policies, they don't receive the health care that they need when they need it due to insufficient coverage.  In a system where health care is tied so closely to employment, the downturn in the economy is foreboding, signaling a possible worsening of this crisis.  And yet, in some good news last week, the percentage and number of uninsured actually dropped from 2006 and 2007, from 15.8% to 15.3%, and from 47 million uninsured to 45.7 million.  The cause?

The expansion of a the federal Children's Health Insurance Program, ensuring nearly one million more children.

A government for the people is one that responds in times of need to protect our core American Values.  Now is time for Congress to defend those values not with another holiday, but with real, practical solutions to key issues such as health care.  What we need now is something much more than another day of barbecuing.

Leading by Example

Seventy years ago this month, New York State’s political leaders gathered in Albany to confront an economic and social challenge, the Great Depression, that makes today’s situation look rosy. Representing urban, rural, and suburban communities across the state, the group assembled for a constitutional convention designed to retool the state’s constitution for the daunting challenges of a new era.

The constitution that emerged from that 1938 convention is a remarkable example of visionary leadership combined with pragmatic action and shared responsibility. It offers an important example to New York’s contemporary leaders—who are, again, meeting in Albany to address tough fiscal challenges—and to political leaders struggling with similar challenges around the country.

Read the entire post on Blog for Our Future.

Monday Health Blog Roundup

• The Washington Post reports that the government’s reckless overspending over the last few years, is now directly affecting the health of America’s disabled and elderly.  The Republican-led Congress of 2003 created a “doughnut hole” in drug benefit coverage in order to make it more affordable for the federal government.   Nearly 3.4 billion people were affected in 2007, having to pay the entire cost of their medication until they spent, out of pocket, $3,850.  Many people in Medicare have diabetes, high blood pressure and other chronic conditions.  The result?  15 percent stopped taking their medications when forced to pay for the entirety of their prescriptions.  For example, 10 percent of diabetes patients stopped buying their medication, while 16 percent of high blood pressure patients and 18 percent of osteoporosis patients stopped as well. 

• In its opinion section, USA Today has a posting by a primary care physician, blogging at www.kevinmd.com.  He writes about Medicare’s call for a formula that would have regular decreases of more than 20% in physicians’ payments by 2010.  Medicare hopes to curb the exorbitant expenses of the US health care system which now exceeds $2 trillion annually and is the most expensive system in the world.  But cutting doctor’s pay by 20%, according to the author, would only cut spending by 2%, and would only drive doctors away from caring for Medicare patients.  For example, in states like Texas, the number of physicians NOT accepting Medicare exceeds 40%.

• The Kaiser Family Foundation's blog reports on a story that appeared in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution on how HIV/AIDS advocates from Georgia, craft messages towards “urban, white, gay men” whereas “black, rural, women and young people” are the group that are at high-risk for acquiring HIV/AIDS in Georgia.  In 2006, blacks comprised 30% of the state’s population, yet 71% of the state’s HIV/AIDS population. 

• Texas’ Rio Grande Valley Region may be a microcosm for a potential trend in a diabetes outbreak for the U.S.’s growing Hispanic population.  Written up in The Monitor on August 18, the Rio Grande Valley region has a diabetes rate three times the national rate.  According to the chair-elect of the American Diabetes Association, “Hispanics, American Indians and blacks have a higher prevalence of the disease than other ethnic groups,” while Texas state Senator Eddie Lucio said, “as many as half of minority youth across the nation will develop diabetes at some point in their lives.” This statistic is compared to 8% of people nationwide that have diabetes.  Moreover, the region’s medical expenses associated with diabetes neared $1.5 billion in 2007, while such costs were $74 billion nationally in the same year.  It is believed that lack of access to healthy food options is a primary factor causing this spike in cases. 

Refusal To Participate in Maternal Deaths Review Shows City Has Not Learned from Brooklyn Death

The public recently witnessed the lack of basic care that people are subjected to at Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn, New York.  A woman was left for dead in the middle of the hospital’s psychiatric ward waiting room as staff did nothing but walk away.  The evidence in the New York Civil Liberties Union's lawsuit against the city proved that this was not an isolated incident (it just happened to be one of the only ones caught on tape).  Unfortunately, New York City's government is not learning from this catastrophe and taking sufficient steps forward to examine their hospitals - Women's eNews is reporting that the city is refusing to participate in a state review of maternal deaths and racial disparities, despite the fact that New York City has the highest number of maternal deaths and one of the largest populations of African-American patients in the country.

The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (the same agency that is named in the NYCLU lawsuit as the agency that is responsible for the negligence at Kings County Hospital Center), has refused to participate in the review the Safe Motherhood Initiative is conducting.  Pamela McDonnell, a spokesperson for Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) said:

We chose not to participate in the Safe Motherhood Initiative simply because we already participate in a number of established monitoring and review processes, measures and collaboratives.

However, one of the main points in the NYCLU's complaint was that the city had insufficient monitoring and oversight measures at its hospitals - it was this lack of oversight that led to last month's death at Kings County, and it could be part of the cause of numerous maternal deaths at city hospitals.

Monday Health Blog Roundup

•   This past week there have been a number of news articles about the Black AIDS Institute study on the racial disparities among those living with HIV/AIDS in the United States.  The New York Times pointed to the part of the study that said that if one only counted the African American population in the U.S., the country would have the 16th highest rate of people with AIDS:

Nearly 600,000 African-Americans are living with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, and up to 30,000 are becoming infected each year. When adjusted for age, their death rate is two and a half times that of infected whites, the report said. Partly as a result, the hypothetical nation of black America would rank below 104 other countries in life expectancy.

The Washington Post's coverage of the study focused on the Institute’s criticism of the federal government’s approach to addressing the AIDS crisis in black communities:

African Americans with HIV -- at least 500,000 -- are more numerous than in seven of the 15 "target countries" in the Bush administration's global AIDS initiative, which has spent about $19 billion overseas in the past five years.

A DMI Blog posting last Thursday also discussed the study and questioned whether the next President would choose to focus on tackling racial disparities in the American HIV/AIDS population, or would continue to ignore the issue:

The bottom line is that the HIV epidemic in the US continues to spread, and at a rate greater than was previously thought. The real measure of political leaders and the American people is if this bad news spurs good action – the establishment of a comprehensive and accountable national AIDS strategy that will eliminate barriers to effective prevention, generate adequate resources, and hold the government accountable for ending this epidemic.

The Black AIDS Institute study can be accessed here.  To learn more about the general prevalence of health disparities in the U.S., read The Opportunity Agenda fact sheet Healthcare and Opportunity.

•    The Kaiser Health Disparities Report has pointed out that new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows the presence of racial disparities in the current U.S. infant mortality rates.  According to the new data, black infants are 2.4 times more likely to die before they turn one year old than white infants are:

CDC officials say the higher rates in large part can be attributed to low birthweights, shorter gestation periods and premature births. Experts say that it is difficult to identify a link between race and higher infant mortality but noted that higher rates of poverty, limited access to health care and dietary differences are possible contributors.

•    An editorial in last week’s Los Angeles Times discusses how rising food prices are actually likely to increase obesity rates in the U.S., not decrease them.  In many other parts of the world, an increase in food prices leads to an increase in rates of hunger (not obesity).  However, the article points out that obesity has a lot to do with the type of food people consume, not just the amount:

Obesity isn't simply about too much food. It's about the type of food, how it's prepared and the balance of calorie intake with physical activity. Stress and social conditions can also play a role.

Obesity rates have long been more prevalent in poor communities in the U.S. - the article also points out that the states that have the highest rates of obesity also have the highest proportion of families living in poverty.  People living in poor communities, particularly poor communities of color, must have access to healthy food in order to prevent these health disparities from becoming more extreme.  To learn more about inadequate health care access in communities of color, read the CERD report to the UN, Unequal Health Outcomes in the United States.

•    An essay in The New York Times discusses how the American Medical Association’s apology for its past racism towards black physicians and patients brought to light the historical split between the AMA and the National Medical Association, a group that represents black physicians.  The essay pointed out that while last month’s apology was an important step in bridging the gap between the two organizations, more needs to be done to overcome the inadequate representation of black physicians in the medical profession:

Yet reminders of this rancorous history persist, and the A.M.A.’s apology remains pertinent, if long overdue. Consider this statistic: In 1910, when Abraham Flexner published his report on medical education, African-Americans made up 2.5 percent of the number of physicians in the United States. Today, they make up 2.2 percent.