A D.C. Neighborhood Finds Itself in Unhealthy Condition
Friday, November 24, 2006; Page A01
The seedy commercial strip with the liquor store and carryout deli was once anchored by a pharmacy. A Baptist congregation worships in the neighborhood's former Safeway. The Spic N Span market on the corner closed years ago, and the bakery that perfumed the air with the aroma of fresh bread is now a trash transfer station.
The older denizens of Hayes Street NE -- just a block off "the Avenue," as people in this part of the District call their stretch of Nannie Helen Burroughs -- remember when the businesses began pulling out or changing hands. It was when they began losing their doctors, too. Dr. James on 49th Street, Dr. Collins at 48th, Dr. Pinkney, Dr. Thornton. All were mainstays who'd brought families through sickness and injury. As they left, nobody took their place.
  Once doctors and a pharmacy could be found in this part of the District's Ward 7, where Nannie Helen Burroughs and Division avenues NE intersect east of the Anacostia River. (By Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post) |
The exodus eroded the neighborhood's well-being. These days, with resignation more than bitterness, many people go halfway across the city, or miles into Prince George's County, for medical care, medicines, even fresh produce.
"We got more undertakers out here than anything," scoffs Elbert Sims, whose perspective spans six decades.
The view from Hayes Street illustrates the reality of most neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River, where an acute shortage of doctors and significant poverty factor into high rates of chronic illness and mortality. Ward 7, in particular, suffers disproportionately from heart disease, cancer, hypertension and asthma. Nowhere in the city is there more obesity.
Ever since the contentious demise of D.C. General Hospital in 2001, Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) and the D.C. Council have debated how best to improve the health of communities east of the river. The discussion has been divisive rather than unifying, pitting supporters of a proposed $400 million hospital against those who urge massive investment in primary and specialty care and disease prevention.
Residents of Ward 7, the heaviest users of D.C. General, have been the biggest proponents of a new hospital. But in the blocks of Hayes just off Nannie Helen Burroughs and Division avenues, which never needed the government's safety net as much, opinion is more mixed.
The alternative plan -- the latest before the council -- could indeed bring doctors and services closer, people say. They yearn for a pharmacy within walking distance, a nearby pediatric practice or ophthalmologist, a diagnostic center where they could go for CAT scans and mammograms. Except for several centers that largely serve poorer patients, the ward has virtually no standalone medical facilities. One of the few is in a congested shopping plaza two miles away, and its success speaks volumes about the magnitude of health problems on this side of the river.
Open 13 hours a day, six days a week, it provides dialysis for scores of people in final kidney failure.
Ghost of Suburban Gardens
"Suburban Gardens" was a developer's name for the area when its small, semidetached houses, fronted by steep, postage-stamp yards, started going up on the edge of the District's Deanwood community at the end of World War II. Although the name faded, residents established a kind of suburban stability and cohesion, one they've maintained even as fortunes declined.
Several original homeowners or their descendants -- including a newborn great-great-granddaughter -- remain in the 5100 and 5200 blocks of Hayes. The seniors tend toward federal and city government retirees, more blue- than white-collar. The other generations are more diverse. Angel Williams, who is 34, commutes to Fairfax County for her school security guard job. Norris Kingsbur is a 52-year-old computer technician, self-employed.
Kingsbur has no regular physician, despite a painful encounter with a kidney stone that sent him to the Howard University Hospital emergency department this spring. "Eventually, I got to get" a doctor, he allows. He'd prefer an MD in the neighborhood and suspects that proximity would encourage him to pay more attention to his health and the 80 pounds he wants to lose. "Closer to home, it's better," he says.
