Articles About Health & Wellness

As a community, we often talk about the young people who are the “most vulnerable” or who are at “high risk.” Admittedly, we don’t always know who exactly those young people are and what their experiences have been. And far too often, those labels become the only story we associate with them. We don’t always […]

Your access to medicine, lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines and other pharmacy services might depend on what part of town you live in. The Urban Institute recently updated the Quality of Life Explorer data maps to include several new metrics, one of which is particularly relevant as we enter year three of the global pandemic. “Proximity to […]

Health and economic mobility are connected, and the burdens of poor health don’t fall equally on different groups in our society. In Charlotte, where you live — along with your race, income and other demographic factors — has a big impact on aspects of health, from access to pharmacies to fresh food and even average […]

Health influences everything from a person’s ability to work to medical debt, and health inequalities have big consequences in our community on economic mobility and people’s ability to get ahead. Yet the burden of poor health is not evenly spread, because of food deserts, lack of access to insurance, pharmacies and doctors, and the embedded […]

Contributing writer Martin Zimmerman interviews Sarah Hazel, recently appointed as Chief Sustainability & Resiliency Officer for the city of Charlotte. Sarah Hazel comes to the Strategic Energy Action Plan team from a six-year tenure on the city manager’s staff, where she worked on a wide range of initiatives including SEAP program development. She now manages […]

In addition to everything else in 2020, we had more than our fair share of rain. In fact, by early November we had already seen 53 inches of rain in the Triad region of North Carolina, which is well over a foot above our normal rain level for an average year. Charlotte received almost 59 […]

Since the coronavirus lockdowns began, Mecklenburg’s resource helpline has seen housing assistance requests jump 219% and food assistance jump 747%. These numbers are an indication of the dramatic impacts we’re seeing unfold on Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s economy. It has been more than one month since Governor Roy Cooper declared a state of emergency to combat the spread […]

Closed bars, restaurants and breweries. Hundreds of thousands of employees working from home while trying to home-school children. Near-empty road and no toilet paper on the shelves. The immediate impacts from the coronavirus crisis are highly visible. But the virus could have more long-lasting and farther-reaching impacts beyond the immediate unemployment and economic disruption we’re […]

Sharp differences in race and income are visible on a map of Mecklenburg County, generally in the familiar “crescent and wedge” pattern many Charlotteans are familiar with. For example, check out the divisions on this map of household income: But differences are also available in other, more unexpected dimensions as well. These five maps illustrate […]

Richard Jackson thinks it’s time to stop blaming individuals for the U.S. obesity problem. The problem, he believes, is far more systemic, including the automobile-centric design of modern American life and the ready availability of high-sugar and high-fat foods. He thinks today’s parental fears of child abductions are not realistic and hurt children’s need for […]

Can the buildings, streets and sidewalks around you change your health? Richard J. Jackson thinks they can. Jackson, professor at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, has made the creation of healthier environments his life’s work. He’s the author of books including Urban Sprawl and Public Health, published in 2004, which examined the connections between […]

Wilmore resident Kris Steele knew his neighborhood was a food desert, an area with little access to fresh food. But it didn’t hit him what that meant until he saw neighborhood kids streaming in and out of the corner convenience store carrying bags of candy. To get there, the kids walked past a rusting chain-link […]