Dorchester is the largest neighborhood in the City of Boston, and its most diverse section. Almost 75% of Dorchester’s 130,000 residents are minority – mainly African Americans, Afro-Caribbean, Latino, and Vietnamese. Within Dorchester are some of the city's poorest sections, and these areas are served by the Codman Square Health Center and Dorchester Multi-Service Center.

Codman Square Health Center and Dorchester House Multi-Service Center are two of Boston's most respected health centers. Ten years ago, they formed an innovative partnership called DotWell to allow both health centers to share the responsibility for improving the health of Dorchester. A mission-driven staff is dedicated to providing high quality, integrated clinical and community services that address health disparities, build social capital, and meet the complex needs of our community. Through this partnership, the health centers have been able to develop programs to address the issues of chronic disease, poverty, violence, and youth and public health services.

Both health centers provide excellent clinical services which have received the highest rating from the Joint Center on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. They serve more than 41,000 active patients with almost 200,000 patient visits annually.  These racial and ethnic minority populations are disproportionately affected by diabetes and other chronic diseases. The two health centers serve 1,835 active diabetic patients, many with co-morbidities such as hypertension, obesity, and depression. But worse, all indications are that the younger generation of Dorchester residents already exhibit problems such as obesity, and will have even higher rates of chronic diseases such as diabetes.

Although clinical services can help ameliorate the effects of diabetes and other chronic diseases, both health centers recognize the importance of dealing with the causes of the problem, which can be summarized in two words - unhealthy lifestyle.
 

• $100 billion in annual health care and related costs

• From ’79-’99, annual hospital costs for treating obesity-related diseases in children rose from $35 to $127 million

• Health consequences: CVD, diabetes, sleep apnea, certain cancers, degenerative joint disease

• Overweight youth have a 70% to 80% chance of remaining overweight or becoming overweight as adults

• Being 20 pounds overweight can reduce life expectancy by 20 years

• 1/3 of U.S. children born in 2000 will become diabetic (USDHHS, 2001 Feinkenstein Obesity Research 2004)