CHECK THE STATISTICS...LET'S DO BETTER IN AREAS WE CAN.....

-Blacks die of heart disease much more often than whites, and die younger, despite the availability of cheap prevention measures like weight loss, exercise, blood-pressure and cholesterol drugs, and aspirin. The same is true for strokes.

-Overdoses of prescription drugs now kill more Americans than overdoses of illegal drugs, the opposite of the pattern 20 years ago. Overdose death rates are now higher among whites than blacks; that trend switched in 2002, after doctors began prescribing more powerful painkillers, antidepressants and anti psychotics — more easily obtained by people with health insurance.

-More than 80 percent of all suicides are committed by whites, but young American Indian adults have the highest suicide rates by far — 25 per 100,000 population at age 21, compared with 14 for whites, 10 for blacks and 8 for Asians and Hispanics.

-American Indians and Alaska Natives are twice as likely to die in car crashes as any other group.

-Babies born to black women are up to three times as likely to die in infancy as those born to women of other races.

-High blood pressure is twice as common among blacks as whites, but the group with the least success in controlling it is Mexican-Americans.

-Compared with whites, blacks have double the rate of “preventable hospitalizations,” which cost about $7 billion a year.

-Blacks, Hispanics and American Indians, whether gay or straight, all have higher rates of new infection with the AIDS virus than whites, and the situation is getting worse for blacks and Indians. Asians have the lowest rate.

-Binge drinking — defined as five drinks for men and four for women — is increasing. In a switch from the norm for health problems, it is more common among the better-educated and more affluent, including college students. But poor people, and especially American Indians, drink much more heavily when on binges.

-Teenage pregnancy is holding steady or falling for all ethnic groups, but is still three times as common among Hispanic girls as among white girls, and more than twice as common among black girls as among whites