America's Wire Releases New Article on Growing Trend of Hospital Closures in Minority Communities Across the Country

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- America's Wire today released a story on the growing number of hospitals that are closing or moving out of minority neighborhoods, leaving huge voids in health care services, especially trauma treatment, for residents of these communities.  

Award-winning reporter, Marjorie Valbrun, reports that hospitals have closed or face closure in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, St. Louis, New York, Washington and parts of New Jersey.  Detroit has lost more than 1,200 hospital beds since 1998 because of closures and has no public hospital. And the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has concluded that the closures have created considerable health care gaps for residents in these communities.

"This problem has been escalating dramatically and is a consequence of a system where health care is a market commodity that is bought and sold by those who can afford it," Brian D. Smedley, vice president and director of the Health Policy Institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, says in the article.

This story, as well as others, is available at www.Americaswire.org.  Our wire service provides mainstream newspapers, community papers, websites, ethnic publications and wire services with stories that report on structural racism in America, and the communities impacted by it.  To access our story database, please go to www.Americaswire.org  and click on the red link "America's Wire Subscribe here."  The order page provides annual and monthly subscriptions.  Subscribers are permitted to publish our articles in their current form or make edits that customize the stories for their publication or website. America's Wire provides a minimum of two enterprise stories a month by our staff reporters, Ms. Valbrun and Kenneth J. Cooper, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. We also provide articles by freelance writers, as well as commentaries from experts on a variety of topics.

Other stories currently available on America's Wire include:

• Marisa Trevino's commentary on increases in hate crimes against Latinos
• The impact of black prosecutors across the country
• Q & A with Shirley J. Wilcher, director of American Association for Affirmative Action
• The impact of residential segregation on health outcomes
• Conservatives blaming the poor for being poor
• The declining number of black males at colleges and universities
• Tim Wise, a white crusader against racism
• States easing restrictions on ex-convicts

America's Wire is operated by the Maynard Institute's Media Center on Structural Racism. Our news service provides enterprising content for wire services, mainstream newspapers, ethnic/community papers, magazines and websites. The professionally reported, written and edited stories help readers comprehend the challenges that people of color face from structural racism.  America's Wire is made possible through a grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.

SOURCE America's Wire