How Trauma Impacts Baltimore Residents Health

     According to the house-staff brochure at Lincoln Hospital, when I visited the Southeast Bronx, in the early 1970's, VD/STD's were six times the national average in that area, Tuberculosis was four times the national average, about 100,000 people in that area were addicted to heroin, 85% of the housing was substandard or deteriorating, and that 400 bed hospital had an average in-patient daily census of 1,100. Annual Emergency room visits were 186,000 or pro-rated about 22 per hour. An 8-year old gang member with a gunshot wound to the thigh, was accompanied through the ER, to the OR, by two older gang members-to make sure he didn't cry when the bullet was removed, among other events there.

     Almost 25 years later, at a Grand Rounds continuing education presentation at Dartmouth Medical School, an Epidemiologist presents findings that 52% of Detroit Metropolitan Area Schoolchildren met the criteria for PTSD.

     Now, 15+ years later, I find myself reading a similar story here, about Baltimore. Are the nation's Mayors talking with one another about this? Is the National League of Cities taking a policy position on this? Are we witnessing an epidemic throughout our nation's Cities? Is this a suitable topic for the State of the Union address at the start of the next Congress? Has Congressional Research Service prepared any reports on this for Members of Congress? Can we get our Congresspersons, to ask [the CRS researchers] what the impact of ACEs on the children of our nation's cities, and rural areas (where the CDC state BRFSS collects ACEs data-as only 28 states ask ACE questions in the BRFSS). My state has yet to begin asking ACE survey questions on the CDC/Behavioral Risk Factor Survey Study.