City reports detail health status, needs
Residents in Baltimore’s Cherry Hill neighborhood die nearly 20 years earlier on average than those in Greater Roland Park, showing a wide disparity in health outcomes for the city’s residents.
Neighborhood health profiles of 55 communities released Wednesday by the Baltimore City Health Department offer a glimpse of the city’s health woes. The reports detail basic demographic information, life expectancy, cause of death, birth outcomes and rates of lead poisoning.
Health officials also released the 2008 Health Status Report, compiling all available health data on the health of city residents.
“These reports fill an important data gaps in our knowledge of the city’s health,” Dr. Caroline Fichtenberg, the health department’s chief epidemiologist, said in a statement.
The neighborhood profiles are intended to show residents and organizations the overall health of the neighborhood to better target outreach efforts, health officials said.
The data show wide variations between neighborhoods. For example, in Cherry Hill, the average life expectancy is 65 years, six years less than the city’s average and 18 years less than residents in the Greater Roland Park neighborhood.
In both neighborhoods, heart disease and cancer are the leading cause of death.
The reports, which were developed with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, will be updated at least every two years.
Citywide, health has improved for residents in several areas, such as heart disease, cancer, HIV/AIDS and drug addiction, according to the reports. For example, the rate of newly diagnosed HIV infections has decreased by 10 percent in the past decade.
