Dr. Leana Wen: A citizen’s guide to good health

This spring, conversations across our city are focusing on the state of the economy, public safety, and education. These are all essential issues – but there is another critical topic that cuts across all of them: health.

In Baltimore, we see that the currency of inequality is years of life, and the opposite of poverty is health and well-being. The average life expectancy in Roland Park, for example, is 84 years; in Downtown/Seton Hill it is 65 years — nearly a 20-year difference. For decades, many of our citizens have experienced concentrated poverty and rampant disparities that are glaringly obvious when we compare health outcomes across neighborhoods.

Read more at: http://thedailyrecord.com/2016/02/25/dr-leana-wen-a-citizens-guide-to-go...

 

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When I’ve asked experts about these approaches, it’s not that any of them are bad. It’s that they fall short. For instance, Leana Wen, the former health commissioner of Baltimore (and soon-to-be president of Planned Parenthood), said that the Support for Patients and Communities Act “is simply tinkering around the edges.”

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