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Mapping Life and Death

Where a person lives is proving to be a remarkable predictor of how long they live.  A mapping project undertaken by Virginia Commonwealth University and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation points to stark differences in life expectancy for communities just a few subway stops or miles apart. “If we want to reduce health care costs, improve health outcomes, and help people live better and longer, then we need to address the real problems that underpin these significant gaps in life expectancy,” writes LISC’s Amy Gillman.

The distance between Washington, D.C. and Rosslyn or Silver Spring isn’t just a matter of a few Metro stops. It’s a matter of years.

A new map released recently by Virginia Commonwealth University and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation illustrates stark life expectancy gaps across the region. It shows that residents of Arlington and Fairfax Counties are likely to live to age 86 and Montgomery County residents are likely to live to age 84.  By contrast, residents of D.C. and Prince George’s County are likely to live only to age 78.

Why, when people live in such close proximity to each other? Because “place” matters. If we want to reduce health care costs, improve health outcomes, and help people live better and longer, then we need to address the real problems that underpin these significant gaps in life expectancy.

Certainly, access to quality, affordable health care is a critical piece of that equation. It’s one reason why community leaders are so focused on bringing high-quality clinics and medical centers to their neighborhoods.

But most data indicate that neither the doctor’s office nor the pharmacy is a primary indicator for health. For that you need to look much deeper, taking in a whole range of social and economic considerations. Can kids get a quality education? Can people find stable jobs that pay a living wage? Do residents have access to goods and services like nutritious food and affordable child care? Are nearby parks and streets safe for kids to play and adults to walk, run and bike?

It’s simple: if the answer to those questions is no, then people in those places die younger.

LISC has been working on these challenges for more than three decades, investing $16 billion in hundreds of struggling communities to help residents build a better quality of life. But even for us, it wasn’t until the last few years that we began to specifically examine our community development work through a health lens.

For instance, we have long known that decent, affordable housing is a critical part of both an individual family’s and a neighborhood’s overall well-being. Investments in quality housing have a multiplying effect, eliminating blight, attracting more commercial investment and encouraging residents to maintain long-term roots that help stabilize their neighborhood.

But all of that also impacts health and wellness. New businesses—and the jobs they bring—follow new housing. Family stress levels go down when finances stabilize and disposable incomes rise. Contaminated land and water is cleaned up by new development efforts. Streets become safer. Grocery stores open. New green space replaces vacant lots and dilapidated parks. A safer, healthier home life gives kids a better chance to succeed in school, which eventually connects to their economic opportunities later in life, and gives them the chance to live up to their full potential.

In short, this life expectancy map doesn’t just tell us how long people live; it tells us how well they live.

How does that all plays out in practice? In D.C., for instance, a new development near the Benning Road Metro stop includes affordable housing, a job training center, a state-of-the-art health center and ground-level retail, all of which is helping revitalize a stretch of vacant land in an area ready for new economic opportunities, while offering easy access to affordable health services to people across the district. 

We see similar gains in other cities—integrating health services in schools, connecting them to nutrition programs at grocery stores, and bringing urban farms to food deserts, to name just a few. The socioeconomic connection to life expectancy that we see in D.C. plays out nationally as well; it is just as clear in Denver, Richmond and Miami as it is in Anacostia and Congress Heights.

The stakes are too high for us to ignore these challenges. When we invest in disadvantaged communities, we can begin to close the health gap. People can live healthier and communities can thrive, no matter where they are on the map.

Amy GillmanABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amy Gillman, Director of Community Health
Amy focuses on integrating health and wellness strategies into LISC’s neighborhood revitalization work. She also oversees our early childhood and healthy food lending activities, and has been instrumental in the development of 190 early learning facilities and leveraging some $96 million to make good nutrition more accessible in low-income places.