Listen: Welcome to Long Island: segregation and suburban health

For season 2 of “Color Code,” we’re zooming into the birthplace of American suburbs and the place where I grew up: Long Island, N.Y.

Suburban communities in the U.S. have a reputation for being largely white, wealthy, and healthy, but the reality is much more complex. People from a wide swath of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds call suburbia home. And within these communities, there are vast differences in health outcomes and life expectancies that can vary widely depending on ZIP codes and neighborhoods, and sometimes even within a few blocks or across train tracks. Despite the impact these disparities have on families and communities, they are frequently overlooked and understudied.

Each episode this season will investigate how where you live affects your health. We’ll speak with researchers, patients, clinicians, and advocates on the health disparities Long Islanders face and how communities here are trying to close these gaps. We will also look at how these trends represent similar outcomes across the United States.

In this first episode, we dive into the history and current reality of segregation on Long Island, and how ripples from this history still have profound effects on health today. We speak with Martine Hackett, an expert on suburban public health — with a particular focus on Long Island, who co-founded Birth Justice Warriors, a group that aims to reduce maternal and infant mortality. Hackett explains her work as one of a handful of researchers investigating suburban racial health disparities in a field that largely suffers from “academic silence.”

A transcript of this episode is available here. 

To read more on some of the topics discussed in the episode:

• Report cites stubborn gaps between races in health care outcomes
• The Suburban Myth of Health and Wealth
• In this sought-after community, scars remain from long-ago ‘urban renewal’
• Deeds To Land In Levittown, Nation’s First Suburb, Rooted In Systemic Racism
• Racism and the Opportunity Divide on Long Island

This podcast was made possible with support from the Commonwealth Fund.