New NYC data ranks neighborhoods for health and happiness

The New York City Health Department has drafted comprehensive new health profiles for all the city’s neighborhoods — tracking everything from life expectancy to air pollution to absenteeism at local elementary schools, according to a report in the New York Post, which added that the profiles show a wide chasm in quality of life largely based on race and income.

The average life expectancy of 74 in Brownsville, Brooklyn, is the lowest in the city — 11 years less than in Tribeca and the Financial District, the Post claimed before stating that Brownsville also had the highest elementary student absentee rate with 40 percent missing 20 or more school days, the highest injury assault rate (180 per 100,000) and the highest premature mortality rate (367 per 100,000).

“This is unfair and avoidable. A person’s health should not be determined by his or her ZIP code,” Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett was quoted in the article.

Tribeca and its Financial District neighbor had the highest school attendance rate, with just 4 percent of students chronically absent, and the lowest premature death rate (76 per 100,000) while Forest Hills, Queens, had the lowest rate of residents who were injured in assaults (11 per 100,000), according to the Post.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said the city needs an action plan to attack health disparities the way the NYPD dramatically reduced crime with CompStat, the article stated. “The numbers are frightening,” he was quoted.

The Rockaways and Breezy Point, Queens, had the cleanest air while Midtown had the worst, the Post reported, adding a variety of other statistics such as East Flatbush, Brooklyn, having the lowest smoking rate at 10 percent, Bayside-Little Neck eating the healthiest food and Midtown having the most active residents, with 90 percent engaging in physical activity in the past 30 days.

The profiles contained some surprises, the article revealed, such as Mott Haven in the South Bronx having the highest flu-vaccination rate in the city at 50 percent while Coney Island had the lowest at 31 percent.