Communities to get $300 million to tackle health

In Memphis, black Medicare beneficiaries are nearly six times as likely as whites to have a leg amputated, a complication stemming from vascular disease and diabetes.

In Mississippi, 57 percent of women aged 65-69 got mammograms in a two-year period versus 74 percent in Maine.

And, in Alaska, 71 percent of Medicare patients with diabetes got an important annual test for blood sugar compared with 91 percent in Vermont.

Reducing such racial and regional disparities, detailed by researchers at Dartmouth Medical School, will be a major focus of a $300 million initiative to be announced Thursday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The program, …