In West Baltimore, Scarce Pharmacies Leave Health Care Gaps

(By Shefali Luthra and Jeremy Snow for Kaiser Health News)

BALTIMORE — The immense new CVS dominates the corner of Pennsylvania and West North avenues. Two smaller pharmacies nearby might both fit inside. One is Keystone Pharmacy, a block away on West North. Care One is five minutes on foot up Pennsylvania.

CVS, its front shelves crammed with brightly-packaged processed foods and household cleaning supplies, is an island of abundance for this West Baltimore neighborhood, one of the city’s poorest.

It’s a contrast that shows what’s changed and what hasn’t in the past year, since Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man, died of injuries sustained in police custody, unleashing days of protests. The CVS, just across from the Penn-North metro stop, was set ablaze on April 27, demolished and rebuilt, opening again just last month. Looters trashed Keystone and Care One, though both reopened within days of the protest. Read article here….

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

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