"When I had my two asthma attacks, having this hospital so close saved my life.  I worry what will happen if I have another (asthma) attack and have to travel 15 minutes farther.  Will I make it?"
-- Veronica Goffe, Former Patient at Mary Immaculate Hospital (Closed February 2009)

"When there is a medical emergency minutes matter. So closing a hospital can be the difference between life and death."
-- Susan Pearlman, Long time employee at Mary Immaculate

Disparities in access to health care facilities are not only an issue of basic fairness; they are matters of life-and-death. By every measure of wellness, the least fortunate New Yorkers and ethnic minorities fair less well than wealthy and white New Yorkers. Poor New Yorkers, as well as African-American and Hispanic New Yorkers, bear a disproportionate burden of illness and premature death.  

Poor New Yorkers and members of ethnic minority groups have shorter life expectancies than wealthy and white New Yorkers. Often, the causes of premature death for these groups are preventable ones.

• In 2001, life expectancy in New York City’s poorest neighborhoods was eight years shorter than in its wealthiest neighborhoods.  If the all-cause mortality rate that exists in the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods existed in its poorest, more than 4,000 deaths could be prevented each year. 
• The rate of premature death is more than twice as high in poor neighborhoods than in wealthy ones, and, even among those who die prematurely, people in poorer neighborhoods die younger.  For every premature death, five years of life are lost in poor neighborhoods than in wealthy ones.