January 2006

• Black infants are nearly two-and-one-half times more likely than white infants to die before their first birthday.

• More than one out of every three black people are plagued by hypertension; this is the highest rate in the world. Hypertension can damage kidneys and lead to stroke, heart failure, and heart attack when it is not treated.
• White adults are more likely to receive treatment than African Americans for hypertension complications, even though African Americans are affected at higher rates.
• Of all men ages 20 and older, 36.4 percent of African Americans have high blood pressure, compared to 25.6 percent of white men.
• Nearly 70 percent of black adults between the ages of 20 and 74 are overweight; more than half of ALL black women are overweight.

• Black women are close to 80 percent more likely to die of a stroke than white women, and 30 percent more likely to die of a heart attack.
• More than 2.2 million African Americans have diabetes.
• African Americans with diabetes have a 27 percent higher death rate than whites with the disease.
• African Americans are 13 percent of the nation�s population and account for 56 percent annually of new HIV infections. A quarter of these new infections are among people under 25 years of age.
• Two-thirds of new AIDS cases among teens are black, yet they are only 15 percent of the national teen population.
• African American and Latino children make up more than 80 percent of pediatric AIDS cases.
• Black women are diagnosed with AIDS at a rate 25 times that of white women.
• HIV-positive African Americans are seven times more likely than whites infected with the virus to die from HIV-related illness.
• African Americans are three times more likely to be hospitalized and also three times more likely to die from asthma.
• More African American women die from asthma than those of any other ethnic group; the mortality rate is more than 2.5 times higher than that of white women.
• Black people are 10 percent more likely to suffer from cancer and 30 percent more likely to die from cancer than whites.

• Nearly one-third�32 percent�of African Americans do not have a regular doctor. By contrast, only 20 percent of white Americans do not have a regular doctor.
• Close to 1.8 million African American children in the United States do not have health insurance.
• Fourteen percent of African Americans receiving HIV treatment have private insurance.
• In a study of black inner-city children with asthma, doctors prescribed long-term control asthma medications for only 42 percent of those who needed them.

• Nationally, half of all black neighborhoods lack access to a full-service grocery store or supermarket.
• Nationwide, predominantly white neighborhoods have four times more supermarkets than predominantly black neighborhoods.
• When there is a supermarket in a community, studies show that there is a 32 percent increase in fresh fruit and vegetable consumption.
• Fifty percent of black adults do not participate in light, moderate, or vigorous physical activity regularly as opposed to 35 percent of white adults.
• White youths are 14 percent more likely to engage in regular exercise than African American youths.
• Seventy-one percent of African Americans across the United States live in counties that violate federal air pollution standards, compared with 58 percent of white Americans.
• There are 1.7 acres of park space for every 1,000 people in African American neighborhoods in Los Angeles, compared with 31.8 acres in white neighborhoods.