It matters where you live. And it matters what we do about it.
In New Hanover County, where you live can make a difference of as much as 17 years in how long you can expect to live.
That number stopped us in our tracks.
A year ago, members of the Coastal Journalism Hub gathered at the Cameron Art Museum to talk about the health issues facing our community. We were looking for a story that was too big for any one media outlet to tackle alone —something important to the whole community, something everyone needed to know about.
We started here: What does our community need to understand about health, and how can journalism help us understand it?
As a nurse-midwife and the Hub’s project manager, I came to that conversation with another question in mind:
Could we create information and storytelling that not only informed people, but helped us see the conditions that shape health — and imagine what we might do about them?
Our group considered more than 60 ideas that day.
The topics ranged from access to health care and how health care is financed to navigating the health system, cultural influences, climate and natural disasters, politics, nutrition, exercise and technology. Our 13 founding members represent media outlets, the arts, and nonprofit organizations working to improve the health of our community.
And one statistic kept bringing us back to the same question: Why is there a 17-year difference in life expectancy between some neighborhoods in New Hanover County?
That question has become the focus of the Hub's reporting since January.
We have held three community listening sessions, and our members have published or produced 25 stories. Those stories have explored not only the gap itself, but the conditions behind it and the people and programs working to change those conditions.
Recently, the StarNews published a story about the New Hanover County neighborhood with the longest life expectancy. Renee Spencer has been reporting since January on the 17-year gap, the community's response to the reporting, and potential solutions.
Encore Magazine recently published another Hub story examining the health costs of climate change.
These stories are different, but they are connected by a common question: What shapes our health, and what can we do about it?
That is where collaborative journalism becomes important.
No single newsroom, nonprofit organization, artist or community group has all the information — or all the relationships — needed to tell a story this complicated. Health is shaped by much more than what happens in a hospital or clinician's office. Housing, transportation, income, education, the environment, neighborhood investment, access to healthy food and opportunities to participate in civic life all matter.
Collaborating allows us to look at those connections from different perspectives.
It also asks us to listen differently.
As we've done this work, we've had to wrestle with how to tell stories about health disparities without reducing people to statistics or defining communities by what they lack. We have talked about bias, dignity, integrity and resilience. We've practiced using trauma-informed approaches to help us stay grounded and regulated when we're working with stories that can be difficult to hear and tell.
And we've learned that community members are not simply subjects of these stories. They are experts in their own lives and in the places where they live.
With generous support from the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, we are ready to keep listening and keep reporting.
I am deeply grateful to the founding members of the Coastal Journalism Hub for being curious, enthusiastic, caring and willing to stay in the room when the questions got complicated. We've challenged one another, learned from one another and begun building something that none of us could have created alone.
We don't believe journalism by itself can close a 17-year life expectancy gap.
But we do believe that a community cannot solve what it does not understand. And we believe that understanding grows when we listen to one another, ask better questions and make information accessible to everyone.
So, we hope you'll continue to follow the reporting, join the conversation and tell us what you are seeing in your own neighborhood.
Because it matters where you live.
And what we do about it matters, too.
Suzanne Wertman is a certified nurse-midwife with over 20 years’ experience and is a co-founder of the Coastal Journalism Hub. She also works as a consultant for Massachusetts Department of Public Health and teaches health policy at Thomas Jefferson University.
This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: New Hanover's 17-year life expectancy divide fuels Hub's reporting
