by Jacqueline Neber Jacqueline Neber

Mayor Eric Adams’ State of the City speech was relatively light on mentions of health care policy. However, he painted an optimistic picture of the city’s future, buoyed by promises to improve health care access for women and protect kids’ mental health in the face of excessive social media usage.

The city is “strong, far stronger than it was two years ago,” the mayor said in his address, given Wednesday at CUNY’s Hostos Community College in the Bronx. But its continued success, he emphasized, centers around making sure more women can reach equitable health care.

According to the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the maternal mortality crisis in New York is “especially severe” for Black mothers. The pregnancy-related mortality ratio for Black women between 2016-2020 was four times higher than that of white women. In 2020, the department reports, 51 women died pregnancy-associated deaths and 23 were Black.

To that end, Adams announced Wednesday that the city will soon launch a $40 million Women Forward NYC initiative, aimed at making the city a more equitable place to live. Parts of the program will work to reduce mortality rates among Black and Brown women and improve access to comprehensive medical treatment and screenings for postpartum depression.

Beyond maternal health, the plan aims to enhance mental health education and outreach for women, address barriers to sexual and reproductive health and grow initiatives to reduce violence toward women, particularly women of color and those that identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and nonbinary. The full details of the Women Forward NYC initiative have yet to be revealed.

The mayor also centered the city’s young people in his announcement. He connected rising rates of mental health issues among kids to the dangers of social media and said the city is focused on preventing negative consequences going forward.

“Companies like TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook are fueling a mental health crisis by designing their platforms with addictive and dangerous features,” he said. “We cannot stand by and let Big Tech monetize our children’s privacy and jeopardize their mental health.”

Adams’ words coincide with Dr. Ashwin Vasan, the commissioner of the DOHMH, issuing an advisory around youth social media usage. According to the documents, released Wednesday, rates of city high schoolers experiencing hopelessness increased by more than 42% between 2011 and 2021. Rates of suicidal ideation increased by more than 34%.

Vasan’s advisory acknowledges that social media usage might have some benefits for kids. But, he wrote, the U.S. Surgeon General has advised that it poses a “profound risk of harm” to adolescents’ mental health.

In light of this, he directed adults who interact with kids in school and community settings to promote social media usage that protects their mental health. This could include implementing “tech-free” time to encourage in-person connection, he wrote, and modeling healthy social media use. He also encouraged parents and caregivers to implement family media plans and delay giving kids access to smartphones until they are 14 or older.

Adams’ address and Vasan’s directive follow similar sentiments from Gov. Kathy Hochul. Earlier this month, she announced that she will push for legislation to limits social media features that are harmful to kids to better protect their mental health.

In response to Adams’ address and Vasan’s advisory, Jennifer March, the executive director of the Citizens’ Committee for Children, cautioned that guidance around social media is “not so simple.”

The online world can be an important place for kids to connect with people they can’t reach in their communities, she said. This can be vital for youth who identify as LGBTQ+ and members of other marginalized groups.

“The question is, how do we support young people and families to make appropriate developmentally appropriate decisions?” March said. She added that focusing on social media cannot take away from the broader investments New York needs to make in its youth behavioral health care system.

As rates of mental health issues among kids rise, their access to care remains limited, she said. Kids and parents are waiting months for screenings, she said, and more and more adolescents are winding up in emergency rooms. They’re then discharged in communities that lack the mental health infrastructure to fully support them, she said. The Citizens’ Committee for Children, which is based in the Financial District, and a coalition of other groups are asking for $195 million in the state budget to invest in the continuum of care so more children can access help.

In his address Tuesday, Adams emphasized that the city will treat social media usage among kids differently going forward.

“Just as the surgeon general did with tobacco and guns, we are treating social media like other public health hazards and ensuring that tech companies take responsibility for their products,” he said. “You’ll be hearing more about this in the future.”