Health Department Releases Annual City Report Card
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Lower Manhattan residents went on drinking binges — consuming five or more drinks in a single occasion — at a rate 55% higher than other New Yorkers, while Staten Island residents smoke at nearly twice the rate of the rest of the city, according to a study newly released by the city health department.
A third of adults on Staten Island smoke, compared to 18% citywide. The Upper West Side, Northeast Bronx, and Southwest Queens have the lowest rates of smoking. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that nationwide, 20.9% of Americans smoke.
In Lower Manhattan, 22% of residents had a drinking binge in the last month, compared to 14% of residents citywide, according to the report.
The statistics released by the city health department were part of 42 individual community profiles — a mix of down-home health advice, epidemiological trend data, factoids — quantifying how New York City’s neighborhoods are abstaining from drugs and alcohol, preventing deadly diseases, and helping children grow up healthy. Or not doing so.
The neighborhood reports, based on aggregated hospitalization data, city vital records, and a 10,000-adult annual phone survey, paint a statistical picture of New Yorkers improving their health, but disparities continue to persist that health officials hope to tackle, the lead author of the health reports, Cari Olson, said in a phone interview.
For example, although citywide HIV deaths have dropped 80% over the past decade, the South Bronx still has 10 times more HIV deaths than the North Bronx.
“That’s a striking disparity that really stands out that we can address,” Ms. Olson, a health department epidemiologist, said.
In some cases, city officials are still trying to determine the meaning behind the trends — including Staten Island’s highest smoking rate.
“The why is very difficult to answer,” Ms. Olson said.
The report also found that Kingsbridge and Riverdale in the Bronx have the highest concentration of rabid animals, and that more people are sent to the hospital for car-crash injuries in Port Richmond in Staten Island. Greenpoint in Brooklyn and Fordham and Bronx Park in the Bronx have high rates of psychological distress.
The health report cards are the latest for a metrics-driven, performance-obsessed MBA mayor who often crafts his administration’s policies with scientific studies — and not just for health. Besides his crackdowns on tobacco and on restaurant trans fats, the mayor endorsed a ban on cell phones in city public schools based largely on data showing they lead to more violence; he has targeted out-of-state gun dealers by citing statistics as well.
“This health department and Dr. Frieden are very data driven,” an assistant health commissioner in epidemiology, Bonnie Kerker, said, referring to Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden. “We as an agency tend to make decisions based on data.”
As in 2003, when officials issued similar health reports for city neighborhoods, the Health Department plans to set priorities using the data, she said.
The earlier findings, for example, prompted the department to open local public health offices in the South Bronx, Harlem, and North and Central Brooklyn to tackle obesity, infant mortality, and teenage pregnancy.
Each of the 42 community profiles can be ordered by mail from 311, and all of them are available on the health department’s Web site, nyc.gov/health.