Urban Water Crisis Causes Significant Public Health Diseases in Jackson, Mississippi USA: An Initial Study of Geographic and Racial Health Inequities

Clean and safe water is at the core of sustainable development, and access to it is critical to public health. Urban water crisis is even more challenging because of population aggregations and its consequences for the clustered social-economic activities in an urban area. It can also be a right issue even in developed countries due to the available investment in water infrastructure and its maintenance that may not be equally available to all communities, in addition to the increasing threats by flooding or drought disasters. Using the decadal urban water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi USA as a case study, this primary research focuses on public health inequities between the white and black, and between the city of Jackson and its eight peripheral cities. The hypothesis is that the urban water crisis in Jackson has resulted in extreme public health injustice geographically against African Americans. Then, this research uses the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) PLACES census tract health data, which provide two health status measurements and 12 health outcomes attributes, to conduct a statistical comparison between Jackson and its eight peripheral cities. The results indicated that the urban water crisis in Jackson already results in immense public health inequities. The small p-values (i.e., <<0.05) from T tests showed the significantly worse mental and physical health status and health outcomes in Jackson, Mississippi than other seven cities, which indicated the city of Jackson with about 83% African Americans may already have started a critical degradation in public health, and the current water crisis continuously threatens the black majority communities in Jackson in addition to the city of Canton, another majority-black city. It indicates that the federal and state governments must face and address this crucial crisis of urban water issues caused public health disparities in addition to the social injustice and environmental injustice of clean and safe water availability to the black communities.