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1992-09-22
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THE WEEK, Page 24SOCIETYChildren in the Danger Zone
For black youngsters, it is often a short trip from cradle to
grave
Researchers have worked for years to figure out why it is so
dangerous to be born black in America; two new medical studies
reveal the extent of the devastation. Writing in the New
England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Kenneth Schoendorf, a medical
epidemiologist at the National Center for Health Statistics,
reported that black babies suffered twice the mortality rate of
white infants even when both parents had completed college.
Based on U.S. birth and infant death certificates that were
filed from 1983 to 1985, a determination was made by Schoendorf
and his colleagues that the gap was due entirely to the fact
that more black infants were underweight at birth.
Although more black women than white women in the study
received late or no prenatal care, that discrepancy alone was
not great enough to account completely for the twofold gap in
mortality rates. Schoendorf points to several possible reasons.
Among them: the cumulative effects of a lifetime of inadequate
access to health care, and the chronic stress associated with
being black in America. One piece of good news in the report:
black and white infants of normal birth weight enjoyed identical
chances for good health.
The other study, from the Journal of the American Medical
Association, documented skyrocketing violence in the inner city.
Dr. Leland Ropp and his colleagues in Detroit found that the
overall rate of childhood death for all races in their city had
risen 50% from 1980 to 1988. Tragically, almost the entire
increase was linked to a jump of 250% in the rate of murder,
usually by handguns, of black boys ages 10 to 14 and of black
teenagers of both sexes, ages 15 to 18.
Preliminary figures show that the epidemic of murder --
fueled by access to cheap, powerful weapons -- spread to other
large cities in 1989 and began moving to smaller cities this
year. Says Ropp: "We're beginning to see children's homicides
and gunshot wounds in places like Minneapolis and Pittsburgh,
where we've never seen them before."