St James AME Church, Elgin, Illinois

Posted on Wed, Dec 7, 2005

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.

You must first create an account to post.