Drawing on personal experience to fight for equitable health care in NYC

As uncertainties rise over the impact of a Trump administration on services for New Yorkers, both government and healthcare professionals have expressed concerns for how the state will continue to offer a level of high quality and equitable services. 

Dr. Michelle Morse, interim health commissioner and chief medical officer at New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, took the subject head-on while speaking at City & State’s Health NY Summit, co-hosted by EmblemHealth in Lower Manhattan on April 17. Drawing on her personal background, she spoke on how those experiences continue to inform the work she does today for New Yorkers. 

Recalling her West Philadelphia roots and an early awareness of – or rather numbness to – the short life expectancy for Black men in her city,  Morse noted how “from a statistical perspective, 65 years is shockingly low, but from a personal perspective, I saw it play out in my own family.”

“Growing up, my dad…he and I would take note of who he was burying, too many people of color were dying.” Such memories would inspire Morse to pursue her career and influence her work in New York, where life expectancy rates are also notably low among Black men for many of the same reasons as in Philadelphia. 

Morse continued by showing recent city health department data that centered around the correlation between poverty rates and life expectancy, offering a visual element for attendees to see that New Yorkers in a predominantly working-class, non-white neighborhood may never see their 70s, while people just one neighborhood over are expected to live beyond that measure. 

Working class areas of northern Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn each had high percentages of families that fell below the federal poverty level, which stands today at $32,150 for a four-person household.  Yet, providing resources based on that income threshold, Morse would point out, is insufficient in the nation’s most expensive city. 

“Poverty in New York City is more accurately captured by metrics that take the high cost of living into account, which the federal poverty level does not. We urgently need a holistic standard to ensure that New York City government accurately address[es] the economic burden of our constituents and related health and social inequity.”

Morse said the health department has worked to reduce the life expectancy gap in New York, also noting that COVID-19 mortality rates are poised to decrease by 60% by 2030, having already seen a 48% decrease from 2021 to 2022. 

“What stands out to me is that the overall number has declined and the inequity between racial groups has narrowed significantly. Racial inequity in COVID deaths is now significantly less amongst our other major drivers of mortality,” she said. 

Morse additionally touted the department’s Neighborhood Health Action Centers, strategically located in priority areas around New York. “We built out physical presence to better serve the communities that have historically been abandoned or harmed by government policies,” she noted. 

While these are positive advancements for the city’s health department and the industry at-large, there is uncertainty ahead, particularly in the face of sweeping cuts from the Trump administration. 

“[It is] not an easy time to be leading in public health,” Morse said. But, in an optimistic view, stressed that “public health is about public health equity” and “trying to disrupt long standing patterns of inequity.”