Melvin B. Miller
Editor & Publisher

Be Healthy

For many years, Boston has taken pride in the quality of its hospitals. The city’s tradition of concern for the health and welfare of its residents reaches as far back as the Boston Public Health Commission, founded in 1799 and the nation’s oldest health department.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s profound concern for the health of Boston’s citizens is consistent with that tradition. As major cities across the country closed their public hospitals because of the growing cost of health care for the poor, Menino used his good offices to effect a merger between Boston City Hospital and Boston University Hospital. Boston Medical Center, the offspring of that merger, has become a national exemplar of how to provide quality health care for the uninsured.

But Menino did not rest on that achievement. When the 2005 report of the Public Health Commission’s Disparities Project revealed a substantial deficit in the health of black Bostonians, he challenged major health providers in the greater Boston area to step up to resolve the problem. A review of the report’s data indicates ample reason for concern.

Black Bostonians seem to have the worst health of any ethnic group in the city. The disparity is most prominent when comparing the differences between the health data of blacks and whites. Black adults are more than 2.5 times more likely than whites to have diabetes and 1.7 times more likely to have high blood pressure. Black women are 11.6 times more likely than white women to have HIV/AIDS.

The discrepancies become even more disturbing when considering the death rate due to disease. Blacks are twice as likely as whites to die of diabetes. Black men are 2.3 times more likely than whites to die of prostate cancer and black women are 2.4 times more likely to die of cervical cancer than their white counterparts. Also, the infant mortality rate for blacks is 2.7 times that for whites.

As a result of these and other disparities, the life expectancy for white men is 5.5 years longer than for black men and 3.6 years greater for white women than black women.

Many factors contribute to these inequalities, including income levels, lack of health insurance and racial discrimination. But two other critical factors are the lack of knowledge about diseases and the scarcity of readily available information on how to access health care programs effectively and affordably.

Fortunately, Partners HealthCare and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts have responded to Mayor Menino’s challenge. They have become joint sponsors of a supplement entitled “Be Healthy” to be published monthly in the Boston-Bay State Banner.

The objective of “Be Healthy” is to provide Banner readers with lucid descriptions of the symptoms of common diseases and useful information about how to obtain health care for timely treatment. There will also be articles about patients’ rights and how the new laws about health insurance will affect them.

This project has resulted from Mayor Menino’s desire to provide equal health care for all Bostonians, without consideration of race or ethnicity. The Banner, Partners HealthCare and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts have responded to the mayor’s leadership and share his vision of a universally healthy citizenry.

Better information is not the only problem to be resolved. But there can be no solution without improved communication.