Healthy Chicago 2.0, the city’s new four-year public health plan, “aims to ensure that every child raised in Chicago, regardless of neighborhood and background, has the resources and opportunities to live a healthy life,” according to Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Among the damning disparities the report documents: One in two African-American and Hispanic children live in “low child opportunity” areas, compared with one in 50 white children. (“Child opportunity” is a quality-of-life index based on socioeconomic and other community characteristics influencing a child’s health and development.) The “very low” child opportunity areas are all black or Hispanic neighborhoods on the south and west sides. The infant death rate in some black neighborhoods is more than double the citywide rate. Children on the south and west sides have elevated blood lead levels. Their life expectancy is five years lower than life expectancy for children on the north side. Their parents are much less likely to be employed. And, of course, there are far more shootings and other violent crimes in their neighborhoods.
A racially segregated city isn’t likely to ever be a healthy one for the same reasons that separate will never be equal.
Healthy Chicago 2.0 could have called for the mayor to fight housing discrimination by significantly increasing CHR’s funding over the next four years. That’s certainly an “actionable” strategy that could improve the health prospects of some children more quickly than community development.
But King also wrote: “With every ounce of our energy, we must continue to rid this nation of the incubus of segregation.”
