The Hopkins 21st Century Cities Initiative partnered with the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at the University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley) to host a conference titled “Race and Inequality in America: The Kerner Commission at 50” on Feb. 28 and March 1.

The panel on public health in cities, focusing on how it relates to black neighborhoods and other marginalized communities, featured Baltimore City Commissioner of Health Dr. Leana Wen, Center for Disease Control epidemiologist Robert Hahn and Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Berkeley School of Public Health Mahasin Mujahid. 

“How are children supposed to learn if they have abdominal pain from not eating? How are we supposed to have a workforce if there is untreated mental illness and drug addiction?” said Leana Wen. “How can we talk about public safety without also addressing poverty and homelessness and other issues that tie to this?”

She said that in the wake of the Uprising in 2015, she focused on getting lifesaving medical care to people whose pharmacies had been looted or destroyed.

“I knew this one patient who said that by the time that she called, she couldn’t see and was nearly unconscious, and she could barely speak, and she said that she was out of her insulin and thought that the best way to keep herself from dying was to stop eating as well,” Wen said.

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