Boston officials said Wednesday that the city will spend $1 million every year going forward to help close gaps in life expectancy among Black men and boys.

The announcement came as community leaders, public health experts and advocates gathered on the UMass Boston campus for the city’s first Black Men’s Health Activation Summit.

The summit comes nearly four months after the Boston Public Health Commission found that the average lifespan for Black men in the city is nine years shorter than every other major racial and ethnic group — the lowest life expectancy of all Boston residents.

“What I did not say in February was that that gap is actually growing,” said Dr. Bisola Ojikutu, Boston’s commissioner of Public Health. “It has grown over the past decade, and … it is still going up.”

When the report came over the winter, city officials said
the city would invest $1 million to fight cancer in Boston’s Black communities, plus an additional $1 million to support community organizations focused on improving health outcomes specifically for Black men. On Wednesday, Ojikutu said that $1 million in funding would be spent annually on Black men’s health efforts.

The summit is part of the city and the Boston Public Health Commission’s Live Long and Well health equity agenda and acts as a targeted effort to address health inequities and inform future Black men’s health initiatives in Boston.

The goal of Live Long and Well, which is the city’s first-ever health equity agenda, is to close neighborhood-based and race-based life expectancy gaps in Boston by 2035.

The premature mortality rate for Black men is also more than twice that of their white counterparts, according to Boston Public Health Commission data. Black men in Boston also die of cancer at twice the rate of other men.

Ojikutu said Boston’s Black male population experiences disproportionately high rates of preventable illnesses and premature death from screenable cancers, cardiometabolic diseases, drug overdose and homicide.

“The longstanding inequities in health outcomes, in life expectancy — this is about racism,” she said. “This is about racism causing chronic stress and leading to increased risk of chronic disease. It’s about racism leading to limited access to all of the resources that one needs to promote both their physical and their mental health throughout their lifespan.”

Ojikutu adds that Black men typically have lower levels of wealth, economic opportunity, education and housing, all of which affects their health.

In 2024, overdose deaths among Black men declined sharply from nearly 100 per 100,000 people to roughly 40, according to Boston Public Health Commission data. The decline was attributed to “equity-centered efforts.”

Dr. Kevin Simon, chief behavioral health officer for the city’s public health commission, said Black men report higher rates of persistent sadness compared to white men.

“Persistent sadness is ongoing, every day, no time off,” he said. “You don’t feel rested when you wake up. You can’t feel calm. Even though it’s nice outside, you might be dreading going outside. That is persistent sadness.”

Boston Public Health Commission data finds that Black men have Boston’s highest rate of mental health emergency room visits, nearly twice the rate of other men.

“Not even including substances here,” Simon said. “When we say we got to get activated, we got to get activated because it shouldn’t be that you have to go to the emergency room to be heard.”

Simon said only 57% of Black men are likely to say they would seek care despite higher need.

But he adds that this is not because of “a lack of willingness to engage.”

“This is this whole John Henryism — trying to pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” Simon said. “It does not work, and we have to be able to have a real conversation about the fact it’s not working.”

The systems are not currently “created in a way that lets them [Black men] feel comfortable showing up as they are,” he said.

Ojikutu said interventions in the clinical setting and meeting individual social needs through food, housing and transportation could help improve health outcomes for Black men. But, she adds, improving community conditions is key.

“This is where we get to the root cause. This is where we get to the things that are sustainable. This is how we change things,” she said. “It’s not about the fish. It’s not about learning how to fish. It’s about building the stream in the middle of Roxbury and saying everybody can eat.”