A report on the Chesapeake Bay released Tuesday found strong disparities between communities in different parts of the bay’s watershed in terms of health, economics and social justice concerns.
A report on the Chesapeake Bay released Tuesday found strong disparities between communities in different parts of the bay’s watershed in terms of health, economics and social justice concerns.
The findings show a larger context for the challenges of improving the health of the nation’s largest estuary, since this was the first time an integrated environmental justice index was included in the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s evaluation. The index considers social factors such as poverty, race, ethnicity, and preexisting health conditions.
While UMCES has considered elements in recent years like walkability and income disparities in communities, this year the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added a new integrated environmental justice index that adds a health component that UMCES had not considered before. That includes data at census levels from more than 4,000 reporting regions in the watershed.
The health of the bay is a reflection of what’s happening across its six-state watershed, which includes Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia and the District of Columbia.
