Discriminatory public policies and the New York City tuberculosis epidemic, 1975–1993

Abstract

Discriminatory public policies removed over ten percent of the fire companies in New York City from 1972–1975, mainly from poor communities of color with very old multiple-dwellings. Hundreds of thousands of housing units were destroyed between 1972 and 1978. Patterns of housing overcrowding changed rapidly and social networks were broken. Tuberculosis went into obvious epidemic in 1979. The temporal and geographic dynamics of the TB epidemic is described here as are the lessons for Europe with respect to treatment of marginalized populations.