Global health is a rapidly growing field in the Seattle area, with hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, supporting local organizations working all over the world. Most of the research goes toward problems in poor countries with higher burdens of disease.

But even with some of the best health care in the world, the U.S. also has pockets of the country where health conditions mirror those of developing countries. In fact, Seattle/King County is home to some of the greatest disparity of any American city.

Dr. David Fleming, director of Public Health -- Seattle & King County and former deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), pointed out some of the inequalities he has found in access to health.

The charts below were developed by King County Public Health staff working in policy development and epidemiology. Clicking on the charts will enlarge them. The data measures rates of smoking, inactivity and poverty, as well as lack of health insurance, and correlates those factors with race and income.Such disparities lead to increased stress, which can also cause premature births, said Dr. Thomas Hansen, chief executive of Seattle Children's Hospital. That correlates with new research that shows stress during pregnancy takes a heavy toll later in a baby's life and may lead to replication of poverty in the next generation.

Using global health ideas and approaches to solve local health issues was the subject of a recent panel discussion, which I reported on here.

Some of the ideas suggested for the "G2L (Global to Local)" strategy include community health workers who are trained to bring services like home visits, case management and health education to neighborhoods, a resource center combining health care and economic development, low- or no-interest loans to finance small businesses such as green grocers, and mobile-phone based health information for emergencies and for patient monitoring.

"Increasingly we may be dealing with a two-way street of information and knowledge transfer," Fleming said. A symposium at Swedish Medical Center next week, "Redesigning Health-Care Delivery," will explore the issue.

Swedish is also positioning itself to be a player in global health. For its 100th anniversary, Swedish plans to unveil its pilot "Global to Local Project" to survey local communities about their health priorities, and test new approaches such as community health workers. The surveys are currently being done in the Tukwila and SeaTac areas. Residents of those areas have lower life expectancies than surrounding communities and higher rates of chronic disease, according to data from the project.