PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia Department of Public Health and Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University released the first report to detail health measures at the neighborhood level in Philadelphia. While other reports show health indicators for cities and counties across the nation, Close to Home: The Health of Philadelphia’s Neighborhoods is the first project to do something similar for Philadelphia’s 46 neighborhoods. The report shows that while national ranking reports find Philadelphia lagging other large cities in health, these poor health indicators are not evenly found within Philadelphia. Just a few miles in the city can change a person’s life expectancy by nearly twenty years. The report can be found on the Health Department’s website, and in a specially designed website.
Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley said, “The Close to Home report puts into stark relief something that we’ve known for a while: there are too many neighborhoods in Philadelphia that make good health difficult to achieve. The structural factors in those neighborhoods shape health behaviors and lead to poor health outcomes. With this new data, we hope to be able to better direct our actions to protect people’s health wherever they live.”
The report is divided up into 46 chapters, one for each neighborhood, presented alphabetically. An introduction shows the range of health outcomes and health factors compared with city averages. Health outcomes such as life expectancy, high blood pressure, diabetes, and low birth weight demonstrate the effects of our neighborhoods. Health factors such as adult smoking rate, primary care physician supply, percent uninsured, drug overdose rates, and K-2 reading proficiency represent social determinants of health that can predispose people to certain health outcomes.
Interpreting findings in this report shows that people who live in poverty are more likely to develop the chronic diseases that are the leading causes of death in Philadelphia, and ultimately have shorter life spans. Neighborhoods that are hit hard by poverty have substantially worse health statistics than wealthier neighborhoods. It is important to note that these health rankings show exactly how much this matters to health. While it is not the purpose of the report to discuss solutions to these health problems, an introductory section lists actions that policy-makers, health-care providers, and Philadelphia residents can take to promote health and reduce disparities in health, such as: expanding primary care services in under-served neighborhoods; supporting efforts to improve access to healthy products (such as fruits and vegetables) and reduce the over-supply of unhealthy products (such as tobacco, alcohol, and junk food) in low-income neighborhoods; and supporting a higher minimum wage to help address poverty. Individually, residents can protect their health by avoiding risky behaviors, particularly smoking, binge drinking, and drug use.
Chief Epidemiologist at the Health Department, Dr. Raynard Washington, said, “The purpose of this report is not to pit one neighborhood against another. It’s to take the lessons learned in those neighborhoods that are enjoying good health outcomes and implement them in those neighborhoods that are struggling.”
The report can be downloaded from the Health Department’s website, and the interactive website is available at https://phillyhealthrankings.org/.