Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Public Health

Traffic Still the Top Injury-Related Killer of NYC Kids

By Noah Kazis | Sep 13, 2011 | 5 Comments

Every year, the Department of Health releases a report on the injuries that kill NYC children [PDF]. And every year, the grim statistics show traffic to be the single largest cause of injury-related death among kids. Between 2001 and 2009, 1,681 children under 13 years old died in New York City, 324 of them from […]

Health Dept: New Yorkers Get Their Exercise By Getting Around Town

By Noah Kazis | May 20, 2011 | 4 Comments

The New York City Department of Health is out with a new bulletin [PDF] articulating the public health benefits of walking, biking, and taking transit. Encouraging those modes — and curbing the amount we drive — will reduce deaths and injuries from traffic crashes, prevent lung disease by lowering exposure to air pollution, and improve […]

This Is Your Brain on Cars—Oh, and Your Lungs and Heart and Gut, Too

By Catherine Lutz and Anne Lutz Fernandez | May 17, 2011 | No Comments

Gerontologists in a laboratory at the University of Southern California exposed a group of mice to the same atmospheric conditions that humans encounter when driving along the freeway. Horrifyingly, they discovered that the mice’s brains showed the kind of swelling and inflammation associated with diseases such as Alzheimer’s. The researchers didn’t super-dose to get these […]

The Federal Transportation Bill Is a Health Care Bill

By Richard J. Jackson | Mar 3, 2011 | No Comments

Dr. Richard J. Jackson is Professor and Chair of Environmental Health Science in the UCLA School of Public Health. On February 23, Senator Barbara Boxer and Representative John Mica held a congressional hearing here in Los Angeles to discuss the federal transportation bill. The dominant theme of the hearing was expanding and establishing federal financing […]

Food Deserts: Another Way the Deck Is Stacked Against Car-Free Americans

By Tanya Snyder | Jan 5, 2011 | No Comments

Slate has posted this map to illustrate the concentration of “food deserts,” where large numbers of people don’t have access to fresh food. The USDA considers households more than a mile from a supermarket and without access to a car to be in food deserts, often with only convenience-store junk food for nourishment. In 2009, […]

NYC MDs: Tackling Obesity Takes Systemic Change and Safer Streets

By Ben Fried | Dec 15, 2010 | 11 Comments

So it looks like the lasting media image from last week’s City Council hearing on bike policy will be Marty Markowitz’s string of non-sequiturs sung to the tune of “My Favorite Things.” The routine was allowed to proceed even though committee chair Jimmy Vacca began the hearings with a call for decorum at all times. […]

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