ARCHIVES OF THE MAYOR'S WEEKLY COLUMN
Archives of Rudolph W. Giuliani

Building on our Record of Success in Public Health

By Mayor Rudy Giuliani

Over the past seven-and-a-half years, we have worked hard to build a healthier City, and we've achieved some notable success -- child mortality is at an all-time low in New York City, immunization rates are at their highest levels in the City's history, emergency room visits have declined, and HealthStat has enrolled 140,000 New Yorkers with health insurance. But we're always looking for ways to build on our record and improve the quality of life for New Yorkers. That's why, over the last few weeks, I was proud to unveil three new initiatives that will keep New Yorkers healthy well into the future: the HHC Asthma Van Fleet, the Health Record for Older New Yorkers, and the largest municipal public-access defibrillator program in the world.

In order to instill a sense of accountability in government, we closely measure the performance of our public health agencies. Many of these measurements are revealing very good news about the state of public health in New York City. For example, the tuberculosis rate is now the lowest ever recorded in New York City, and the number of new TB cases in 2000 decreased significantly for the eighth consecutive year. The lives of the youngest New Yorkers have been improved and protected as infant-mortality rates have continued to decline and the number of new lead poisoning cases for children also continues to decrease. In addition, while the war against AIDS is far from over, the number of HIV disease deaths dropped from 7,984 in 1994 to 2,296 in 2000, and it is heartening to know that the number of newly diagnosed HIV cases dropped from 12,231 to 4,796 over the same time period. And in our search for new ways to prevent disease, the City initiated the New York City Cancer Project, an ambitious long-term study -- the largest in history -- of the causes of cancer.

Asthma has long been one of the primary health challenges facing young people in urban areas. Our City's attempt to educate people about ways to deal with asthma -- the New York City Childhood Asthma Initiative -- has had a powerful and positive effect. The rate of asthma hospitalizations for children ages 0-14 has reached its lowest level since 1988, at 6.4 per 1,000 children treated. A significant portion of this decrease occurred in neighborhoods where hospitalization rates have traditionally been the highest.

In order to slash the asthma hospitalization rate even further, we have joined the Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) in launching a new fleet of twelve specially equipped vans, which will bring education and medical services to the doorsteps of asthma sufferers. These vans will be sent to community-based organizations, with a continued focus on neighborhoods that have historically been hit the hardest by asthma.

Similarly, we will enhance our efforts at improving the lives of senior New Yorkers with the distribution of Health Record booklets, which were developed by the Department for the Aging. Should a senior citizen need emergency care, these handy booklets -- which come with magnetized plastic pouches so that they can be hung on a refrigerator -- will provide paramedics and physicians with basic but crucial information regarding seniors' medical history, their current prescriptions, and their emergency contacts. This will help ensure that senior patients receive the full benefits of New York's constantly improving health services.

Most recently, I announced that life-saving automatic defibrillators -- devices that administer an electric shock through the chest in an attempt to restore the normal rhythm of the heart -- will be installed in City-owned facilities in all five boroughs. This innovation will provide trained civilians and City staff with the opportunity to save thousands of lives in and around our City parks, pools, senior centers, and ferry boats. Their easy-to-use design will give us a sizable edge in preventing heart-disease related deaths throughout our City. I am proud that New York is taking the lead in making this new technology widely available by instituting what is the largest municipal public access defibrillator program in the world.

We are committed to doing all that we can to create a healthier New York, and I am confident that the initiatives we have recently unveiled will build upon the strong strides that we've made in improving the health of all New Yorkers.

For a free copy of the Health Record for Older New Yorkers, call DFTA at (212) 442-1111, or write to by the Department for the Aging at 2 Lafayette Street, 7th Floor, NY, NY 10007. And for more information about asthma management, please call the Health Department's Asthma Action line 1-877-ASTHMA-0 (1-877-278-4620) or visit www.nyc.gov/health.