How community, healthcare groups work to improve Chicago's life expectancy gap

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Depending on your ZIP code, your life span can vary by decades. We reconnected with a West Garfield Park man, who six years after our first meeting, is making it his mission to help residents in his neighborhood live longer.

"At first, it was just an empty lot, but now it's time to change the West Side of Chicago," said Marquis Pitts.

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The I-Team caught up with Pitts at the ribbon cutting at the new Sankofa Village Wellness Center, which recently opened in West Garfield Park. We first met him six years ago when he was a custodian at Rush University Medical Center. It was 2019 and he had just entered a program to help employees advance their careers.

"Now I'm the Community Concierge. I'll be the first person you see when you walk into the Sankofa Wellness Village, a familiar face," Pitts told the I-Team. "I always wanted something safer for my community. Growing up in West Garfield Park, we experienced violence, and I lost a lot of friends, and that influenced me to think of something that could be home for them, a safe place, safe haven, so to speak. This was a dream and just became reality. It still seems surreal to me."

It's part of a concerted push by community groups and healthcare institutions, such as Rush University Medical Center, to cut the life expectancy gap in the city in half by 2030.

"We build phenomenal transplant programs. We can do magic in an intensive care unit. But there's a basketball court here that's going to save more lives than pretty much anything else we've done," said Dr. Omar Lateef, Rush University Medical Center president and CEO.

The difference between living downtown compared to some neighborhoods on the South and West sides can be up to three decades. The city's health atlas and the CIA factbook reveal life expectancy in the Loop is nearly 88 years, almost matching that of Monaco, the highest for any country in the world. But with a 15-minute drive to West Garfield Park, that drops to just 70 years, closer to Iraq or Iran.

Lateef tells the I-Team centers like this will help cut that gap.

"We're going to change the trajectory of the neighborhood and improve the health of everybody around here," Lateef said.

Research shows change is already underway. Since 2020, life expectancy for Black residents in Chicago has surpassed pre-pandemic levels, at its highest since 2010, according to city data. Though it still lags behind white, Hispanic, and Asian residents.

"For so long, I feel like my community has been disinvested and forgotten, so to speak. Now that I have the light that can shine on it, I'm going to change that narrative," said Pitts.