Rob Waters interviews Robert Kahn, director of the hospital’s Community Health Initiative. His goal is to "improve the
health of all the county’s children, not just provide excellent treatment to those who are sick."
Hamilton County, Ohio, sprawls across 413 square miles, spanning neighborhoods like Indian Hill, where the median income tops $300,000 and mansions sell for $3 million, to inner-city communities of Cincinnati, where residents live in dilapidated apartments and the median income dips below the poverty level.
The difference in income between these neighborhoods doesn’t begin to describe the health disparities between them. This number does: Between 2009 and 2011, children from low-income areas like Evanston East and Walnut Hills were 88 times more likely to be admitted into the hospital for emergency treatment of asthma than were kids from Indian Hill.
....Underlying this work is a groundbreaking effort to collect comprehensive data about community conditions and to identify “hot spots” where the incidence of disease and injury is especially high. The data is then used to address those conditions and help prevent injury and illness in the first place.
The initiative focuses on asthma, unintentional injury, infant mortality, and childhood obesity. Wouldn't wrapping this up in adverse childhood experiences be a more comprehensive approach?
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