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Wu directing grants to these 3 Boston neighborhoods to target life expectancy gaps
"We want every resident and family in Boston to live long, healthy lives."
Mayor Michelle Wu announced $5 million in grants Monday targeting the life expectancy gaps in Boston’s neighborhoods.
The grants are for four partnerships — comprised of 12 organizations total — to promote economic security in the neighborhoods with the greatest health disparities: Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan.
“We want every resident and family in Boston to live long, healthy lives. That’s why we’re investing in systemic change and in resources to strengthen families and individuals,” Wu said in a release announcing the grants.
The grant initiative is part of the Boston Public Health Commission’s Live Long and Well agenda, which launched in 2024 and is aimed at closing the life expectancy gaps by 2035.
This comes two years after a 2023 study by BPHC found that the life expectancy of a Back Bay resident was 92 years, while just two miles away in Roxbury, a resident had the city’s lowest life expectancy, at 69 years.
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Overall, life expectancy is seven years lower for Black Bostonians and 10 years lower for Black men, specifically, according to Boston’s commissioner of public health, Dr. Bisola Ojikutu.
“We believe that how long you live should not depend on your race, ethnicity, or zip code,” Ojikutu said in the grant recipient announcement meeting in Dorchester on Monday.
“We know that empowering all of our residents to live long, healthy lives … takes more than investing health care,” Wu said at Monday’s meeting. “It means investing in what makes people healthy: housing, access to nutritious food, economic mobility,” which is especially important because of federal funding cuts to Medicaid, she said.
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The Live Long and Well agenda focuses on the three leading causes of early death in Boston: cancer, unintentional drug overdoses, and cardiometabolic diseases, which include diabetes, heart disease, and related disorders.
The grants, and a second round expected in 2028, are funded by Atrius Health Equity Foundation’s $10 million commitment to the initiative.
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