Earlier this week, Dr. Wen joined federal officials, physicians, patient advocates, policy experts, and public health leaders, including U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development  Secretary Julian Castro New York Times Best Selling Author Wes Moore,  and Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha of the Hurley Medical Center for the National Summit to End Lead Poisoning in Washington, DC, convened by the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative, Healthy Babies Bright Futures, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and the National Center for Healthy Housing.

During a panel, titled “Engaging Communities, Building on Common Ground,” Dr. Wen joined Ben Jealous, Partner at Kapor Capital and former national President of the NAACP; Former Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich, Jr.; Eylssa Koidin Schmier, Senior Campaign Director at MomsRising; and Michael Bodaken, President of the National Housing Trust, to discuss how leaders across sectors can work together to end the scourge of lead poisoning in America.

The two-day Summit brought together 250 leaders, policy makers, strategists, and advocates from diverse communities to engage in crafting a blueprint for action and to build the public and political will to end lead poisoning in five years.

Dr. Wen began her remarks by noting that though Baltimore is home to some of the best medical care in the world, there is a 20 year difference in life expectancy within different neighborhoods in the city – an unacceptable disparity. 

“The currency of inequality is years of life,” she said. Lead poisoning is a symptom of this inequality.

Dr. Wen highlighted the power of collective impact strategies that convene multiple stakeholders. For example, B’More for Health Babies – an initiative comprised of 150 organizations – was implemented in 2009 to ensure that babies are born to thrive in healthy families. Since then, the infant mortality rate in Baltimore City has dropped by an extraordinary 38 percent.

Dr. Wen also highlighted the importance of intervening as early as possible. She suggested that programs like Vision for Baltimore, which provides free eyeglasses to Baltimore school children, should be understood in part as a violence prevention strategy. The same is also true for lead – intervening early to prevent any child from being poisoned in the first place is a moral imperative, and it will have far-reaching consequences both for those children and for the rest of the country.

In Healthy Baltimore 2020, our new strategic blueprint for health and wellness in Baltimore City, we specifically call out the need to reduce the disparity in lead poisoning rates among our goals. The success of this strategy and our programs relies on collaboration with hundreds of organizations, from grassroots level to policy influencers.

Learn more about BCHD’s work on lead poisoning prevention on our website.