Poverty's High Cost to Health

Publication Date: September 2009

Publisher: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Author(s): Kaplan GA

Research Area: Health

Type: Report

Abstract:

In the September 2009 Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity webcast, RWJF President and CEO Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D., M.B.A., discusses social and economic factors that influence health, including access to high quality health care, healthy neighborhoods and grocery stores. In the interview, Lavizzo-Mourey explores how investments in disease prevention can mitigate health disparities and examines how health reform legislation will affect low-income Americans.

"The Intersection of Poverty and Health" is the latest in the Spotlight webcast series available at the Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity Web site. Spotlight is perhaps the leading nonpartisan forum on poverty in the United States, known for presenting “big tent” ideas and solutions for reducing poverty and increasing economic opportunity through its comprehensive Web site, policy events, and original research and surveys.

In addition, RWJF funded a recent report, The Poor Pay More: Poverty's High Cost to Health, which describes many social and economic factors influencing health and points to policies that have the potential for restoring the prospect of good health to the lives of the poor. The author presents compelling evidence that poverty leaves a broad footprint on the health of individuals—effects which have also been noted in published reports from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission to Build a Healthier America.