Baltimore officials will announce a citywide initiative Monday aimed at curbing the number of injuries from falls, a major problem in the city that results in $60 million in hospital costs a year. 

The city’s new strategy will focus on mapping where falls occur using real-time hospital data and targeting fall prevention efforts in hot spots where there are high fall rates. The initiative will also include an educational campaign. The city will work with non-profit organizations to help make seniors’ homes more fall-proof.

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Monday was the final day of the Maryland General Assembly. We are excited about several priority bills the legislature passed, including efforts to ensure affordable access to healthcare, to reduce gun violence, and to advance maternal and child health. Our team at the Baltimore City Health Department provided testimony on no less than 27 bills, including the Maryland Health Care Access Act of 2018 (HB1782/SB387); Pharmacist Gag Rule Bill (HB736/SB576); Maryland Prenatal and Infant Care Coordination Services Grant Program Fund (Thrive by Three Fund) (HB1685/SB912); and the Maryland Violence Intervention and Prevention Program Fund Bill (HB432/SB0545). We are grateful to our representatives in Annapolis for recognizing the need to fight for health coverage for all Marylanders, and for standing on the right side of history.

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On a Baltimore street corner, public health workers hand out a life-saving overdose antidote to residents painfully familiar with the ravages of America’s opioid epidemic. But the training wraps up quickly; all the naloxone inhalers are claimed within 20 minutes.

“Every week, we count the doses we have left and make hard decisions about who will receive the medication and who will have to go without,” said Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen, who issued the city’s innovative blanket prescription for the drug in 2015.

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At a commencement ceremony several years ago, Dr. Linda Rae Murray, then-president of the American Public Health Association (APHA), recounted a famous saying: “When public health works, we’re invisible.” She followed that by urging the graduates to “refuse to be invisible, because […] we need to lend our strength and our science to broad social movements whose goal is to make things better.”

When public health is invisible, we only end up talking about it when things go wrong; people tend to think about public health agencies as entities that respond to infectious disease outbreaks or shut down a restaurant due to health code violations. We frequently think about health as healthcare, but what determines how long and how well we live is less about what happens in the doctor’s office and more about where we live, the air we breathe, and the availability of other resources in our communities. At the Baltimore City Health Department, we believe that all issues – education, housing, employment, public safety, and beyond – can and should be tied back to health. We are committed to making the progress earned through public health visible, and to make the case for incorporating health-in-all policies across the City.

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