Gotham Gazette,  December 11, 2006
by Joshua Brustein

Five more NYC hospitals are slated to be closed

St. Mary's Hospital in Central Brooklyn closed its doors in the summer of 2005, succumbing to long standing financial pressures. The emergency rooms in nearby hospitals were suddenly packed; patients in St. Mary’s mental health and detoxification units were forced to travel over an hour away to a hospital in Jamaica, Queens; and some patients simply stopped getting treatment they had been receiving at St. Mary’s, said Jin Hee Lee, who works against hospital closings for the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. The closing caused a crisis that, she argues, may soon be repeated in other neighborhoods in New York City.

The Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century, a powerful state panel set up to restructure health care in New York State, recommended closing five more hospitals in New York City when it published its report on November 28. It wants 10 others to change the services they provide.

WNYC New York Public Radio,  November 29, 2006

A new report says nine hospitals throughout New York State must close, including five in New York City. The recommendations are part of an effort to fix the state’s health care system, but why is the Government ordering private hospitals to shut down? We’ll look at how economics, politics and public health are colliding to make this happen. Plus: The President goes to Jordan, The Pope goes to Turkey; more on the police shootings in Queens; and burning out isn't just for social workers anymore.

Albany Times Union, Novembe 28, 2006
By CATHLEEN F. CROWLEY, Staff writer

According to the state hospital closing commission: ``Bellevue Woman's Hospital should close in an orderly fashion and its maternity, neonatal, eating disorders, and mobile outpatient services should be added to another hospital in Schenectady County. ... St. Clare's Hospital and Ellis Hospital should be joined under a single unified governance structure and the resulting entity should be licensed for 300 to 400 beds.''

The Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century released its report today recommending the closure of nine hospitals statewide and the reconfiguration of 48 others to eliminate 4,200 hospital beds across the state. About a quarter of the state's hospitals would be affected.

A study released this week by the Harvard School of Public Health reveals the largest measurable gaps in U.S. mortality rates to date.

According to the study, which uses information on race and residence collected between 1982 and 2001 to carve the nation into eight demographic groups, urban black males in high-risk areas have life expectancies more than 20 years shorter than Asians.

The results have worrisome implications, the study's authors write in the article that appears in the September issue of PLoS Medicine. "Millions of Americans, distinctly identified by their socio-demographic characteristics and place of residence, have life expectancies that are similar to some low-income developing countries."

Sir, Thank you for Andrew Ward's thoughtful article on the racial and class inequalities that Hurricane Katrina illuminated in New Orleans, and which persist today ("Katrina rhetoric does little to calm growing storm among poor blacks", August 23). Unfortunately, the barriers to opportunity for poor people and people of colour in New Orleans also exist in many other parts of the country. But while Mr Ward's article ended on a note of despair, the truth is that there is plenty we can do to tackle these issues and we need our government to step forward and do its part.

American opportunity - the idea that all should have a fair chance to achieve our full potential - depends on an effective role for government. We count on its promise to keep us safe and the ladder of opportunity sturdy. Public education, living wages and quality healthcare are all examples of public structures that should make up this ladder, and require an effective government role to function well for everyone. Katrina revealed to us that opportunity is not available to everyone equally, but we know we are capable of much, much better.

Alan Jenkins,
Executive Director,
The Opportunity Agenda,
New York, NY 10012, US

Analysts say affordable housing is the foundation for the city's recovery.

"In the short term, when you have thousands of people in trailers … and thousands with no housing, it makes no sense to demolish public housing units that are habitable or can be easily restored and made habitable," said Alan Jenkins, executive director of the Opportunity Agenda, a New York-based communications, research and advocacy group.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and two other organizations on Monday called for a prohibition on razing public housing units in New Orleans.

All existing public housing resources in the city should be "repaired and reopened," according to a report issued by the NAACP, the Kirwan Institute for the study of Race and Ethnicity and The Opportunity Agenda.

NAACP President Bruce Gordon said he's not opposed to long-term plans to demolish public housing complexes and rebuild them as mixed-income communities, but the short-term strategy in the city should not include demolishing habitable public housing.

As we approach the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we must reflect on the somber memories and heed the lessons learned.

Katrina and its aftermath had a devastating effect on thousands of people throughout the Gulf Coast. We need to pause to honor them.

And we need to recognize that this tragedy flowed not from the storm itself but from the lack of preparedness, the inadequate response and the erratic rebuilding process. A unifying theme connects these failings: Our weakened government was unable to respond quickly and appropriately.

To prevent these mistakes from being repeated, we need to reinvest as a society in government's ability to keep us safe and to ensure opportunity for all.

BY JEREMIAH A. WRIGHT JR.

In recent hearings on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina sponsored by the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, one of those testifying said, "It wasn't the hurricane that killed the people. It was the breach of the levees."

It was such a simple statement, yet profound in its truth. There was a hush in the room as the weight of the statement settled upon us all.

It wasn't Hurricane Katrina that killed the people. It wasn't Katrina whose waters slammed into the houses of thousands of New Orleans residents, leaving them homeless. It was the breach of the levee in the Ninth Ward.

Access to health care services should not depend on the color of your skin. Nor should your chances of having a healthy baby. But immigrant Latinas are too often denied the opportunity to enjoy a healthy pregnancy, avoid disease and receive needed care. The consequences are terrible.

Cervical cancer, for example, is highly preventable through screening and early treatment. But Latina immigrants' access to cervical cancer screening is limited. As a result, their chance of contracting this disease is twice as high as whites, and their chances of survival are disproportionately low.

Race-based medicine, or the practice of treating people differently based on their racial and ethnic background, has long been a subject of interest to healthcare providers, public health practitioners, communicators and others. Now, with the introduction of BiDil, the first medication approved for the treatment of a condition in a specific race (African Americans), the topic is once again gaining increased attention.

Given the intense interest in this subject, I am conducting a series of periodic interviews with physicians, social scientists and others. Each interview subject provides his or her unique perspective on race-based medicine, which I then publish on this blog. Please click here to read the other interviews in this series.

Interview Subject: Dr. Brian Smedley

Last month, New Orleans held its first election since Hurricane Katrina. Most New Orleanians were especially eager to have a say in the mayoral race, and for good reason: the winner will interpret and implement the much-debated "Bring Back New Orleans" plan, determining the future of the city and its residents.

But for people displaced by the hurricane, the voting process proved so difficult and complicated as to deny them a voice in the election. Statistics released by Louisiana Secretary of State showed that African- American voter turnout was down in the April 22 primary, while white voter turnout was essentially unchanged. Black New Orleanians -- those hardest hit by the storm -- are facing the steepest barriers to participation.

When it comes to family planning and reproductive choice, conservatives and progressives alike find agreement on a common objective: more pregnancies in the United States should be wanted, and far fewer should be unwanted. Wanted pregnancies result in better life opportunities for women, their children, and their families.

But when does an unwanted pregnancy become a barrier to opportunity? When reproductive health is politicized and science takes a backseat to ideology. A recent study from the Guttmacher Institute describes just one result of such policies -- an increase in unplanned pregnancies, with disproportionate negative consequences for low-income women, immigrant women and women of color.

On the 46th anniversary of FDA approval of birth control, Silvia Henriquez, Executive Director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, and spokesperson for The Opportunity Agenda, discusses the history of  women's reproductive health on Wake Up Call, WBAI in New York.

Almost a century ago, each of my four grandparents traveled north in search of a better life. My father's parents, African Americans just two generations out of slavery, migrated from the farmlands of Valdosta, Ga., to the auto plants of Detroit. My mother's family, Caribbean immigrants, journeyed from the Bahama Islands to Ellis Island, then on to Philadelphia.

Recently, as I marched alongside thousands of immigrants and their supporters in New York City, I thought often of my grandparents' parallel journeys, each motivated by the American promise of opportunity.

Black Americans should stand together with undocumented immigrants.

Watching the landmark demonstrations by immigrants and their supporters, few could miss the parallels with the historic protests of the 1960s that helped power civil rights laws and moved our country closer to equal opportunity.

Now, in African-American communities, newspapers and chat rooms around the country, those parallels are part of a pointed debate: Would giving undocumented immigrants lawful pathways to employment and citizenship be good or bad for black Americans?

The recent RAND study that suggested that there were few or no differences in the quality of treament of minorities when they got into the US health system has not been taken lying down by those who believe that there are great differences, and that ignoring them to look at the bigger picture, as the RAND researchers suggested, is not the way to go. Brian Smedley, the research director at The Opportunity Agenda wrote this opinion piece criticizing the RAND study for THCB:

NEW YORK, March 22 (AScribe Newswire) -- The Ms. Foundation for Women, the first and leading national women's philanthropy, today announced the appointment of Phoebe Eng to its board of directors, effective immediately. Ms. Eng is appointed to serve a four-year term

SAN JOSE, Calif.--I edit a youth magazine here in the heart of Silicon Valley. The last three articles I edited were: "Undocumented and Stuck in Community College"; "Life as a Felon Is No Life at All"; and "A Generation in Debt." Our publication, Silicon Valley De-Bug, was never intended to present only pessimistic outlooks. But given the utter lack of opportunity for many young people today, anything but pessimism seems out of touch.

According to a recently released report from a think tank called The Opportunity Agenda, "stuck" is a national trend. The report, "Opportunity in America," uses indicators such as economic security, equality and civic voice to determine what many young adults know simply by looking at their own life options -- the ladder has lost its rungs.