complete high school are 2.5 times more likely to die before their first birthday” compared to babies born to mothers with advanced degrees. Another statistic regarding parental education in Spokane points that “children of parents who did not finish high school are 23.4 times more like to live in poverty than children whose parents received an advanced degree in Spokane County and 31.6 times more likely in Washington state” while the likelihood of poverty decreases to “1.8 if the parent receives a bachelor’s degree in Spokane County and 1.2 in Washington state when compared to children whose parents received an advanced degree.” As an adult’s education level increases, the likelihood of living in poverty significantly decreases. Regardless of access to health care, these two statistics seem particularly damning to the cyclic and systemic nature of poor education and poverty. (Dominguez, Wenzl, & Wilson, 2012). It is important to remind ourselves that these disproportionate values are not random or arbitrary, but in fact very distinct and somewhat deliberate. Evidence to support this claim rests in statistical analysis of the Spokane neighborhoods. Using data from the last two decades, “Odds Against Tomorrow” sought to see how much location can determine health. In Spokane there is an 18-year gap in
life expectancy between the neighborhood with highest life expectancy, Southgate (84.03 years) and the neighborhood with the lowest life expectancy, downtown’s Riverside neighborhood (66.17 years). Although overall life expectancy in Spokane County has increased over the last two decades, the gap has become only wider between the two groups with little or no change in affluent or destitute neighborhoods. Riverside has the highest overall age-adjusted mortality rate, which is 2.6 times greater than Southgate. Identifying the top ten causes of mortality and matching the top five neighborhoods in Spokane County with the highest mortality rate for each cause revealed that four neighborhoods have a disproportionate burden of higher mortality rates: Riverside, Hillyard, East Central, and Emerson/Garfield. The same four neighborhoods dominated the statistics for highest mortality rates caused by cardiovascular disease, cancers, chronic lower respiratory disease, unintentional injury, diabetes mellitus, suicide, influenza, pneumonia, liver disease and Parkinson’s. Despite being only a few miles apart neighborhoods have large disparities in health based on social class. (Dominguez, Wenzl, & Wilson, 2012). Where do we go from here? Seeing these significant differences between the top and bottom raises 54