2008 Health Equity Report
- African American children account for 47% of all children living in poverty in Virginia.
- Rural populations are more likely to live in high poverty census tracts than urban populations.
- Virginians with less than 12 years of education have an overall mortality rate that is more than twice that of Virginians with the highest level of education.
The Office of Minority Health and Public Health Policy has released its 2008 Health Equity Report as a vehicle to:
- Draw attention to health inequities that exist in Virginia and to monitor their trends as the Commonwealth strives to eliminate them.
- Illuminate the inequities in health experienced by low income, racial and ethnic minority, and rural populations in Virginia.
- Demonstrate the associations between social determinants of health and health outcomes in Virginia and provide recommendations for reducing and ultimately eliminating these inequities.
Report Highlights
Poverty and Health in Virginia
- Income and poverty are strong predictors of health—they influence the resources and opportunities to be healthy.
- Neighborhoods with high levels of poverty are less likely to have opportunities to promote healthy lifestyles.
Life and Death in Virginia
- Death rates in Virginia increase as the concentration of poverty in communities increases.
- Immigrant groups, on average, have better health status than native born Americans. But this health advantage decreases the longer immigrants remain in the U.S.
- At all levels of education, African American women are more likely, 1.7 to 2.3 times, to experience an infant death.
- Hispanic women experienced the lowest infant mortality rates across all educational groups.
