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Citing race as the difference maker for many of the city's health problems, the Baltimore City Health Department has developed a plan to assess and address those disparities. In a report released Tuesday, the department outlined plans to cut health disparities in half in the next decade by focusing on four areas: behavioral health such as drug overdoses; violence; chronic disease; and "life course," which includes the often-cited 20-year gap in life expectancy between Baltimore's richest, white neighborhoods and poorest, black ones. (Cohn, 8/30)

Baltimore officials presented a 10-year plan Tuesday that sharply highlights the poor health status of African-Americans and aims to bring black rates of lead poisoning, heart disease, obesity, smoking and overdoses more in line with those of whites. “We wanted to specifically call out disparities” in racial health, said Dr. Leana Wen, who became the city’s health commissioner early last year. “And we have a moonshot. Our moonshot is we want to cut health disparities by half in the next 10 years.” Black Baltimore leaders praised Wen for putting disparities squarely in the conversation even as they acknowledged the difficulty of achieving the plan’s goals. (Hancock, 8/31)

After more than a decade of asking why factors such as race, ethnicity, income, gender and sexual orientation often correlate with worse health and healthcare quality for so many Americans, perhaps the biggest question is what can healthcare providers do about it. Some policy experts say the solutions are beyond the reach of healthcare organizations. (Johnson, 8/27)