The commentary by Rumalla et al. 1 observed the socioeconomic levels and corresponding healthcare disparities between Wyandotte and Johnson counties, which encompass the Greater Kansas City area. A salient observation was the notably higher exposure to primary care providers and lower preventable hospital stays in Johnson County, which also had a greater median household income and educational training. Since that commentary, there have been a number of public health initiatives that have been updated to improve concurrent local health disparities. 2-4 In particular, the Kansas City Community Health Improvement Plan (KC-CHIP) established numerous goals to improve public health infrastructure, which included educational funding in disinvested areas with lower property values for 2022-2027. 4 Moreover, there have been notable trends seen in the most recent data extracted from KC HealthMatters®(2015-2019) when compared to the 2014 extraction by Rumalla et al. 1 for the Wyandotte and Johnson counties (Table 1). 5

In 2014, the median household income in Wyandotte County increased from $33,163 to $46,881. 5 Likewise, the median household income in Johnson County increased from $75,139 in 2014 to $89,087. What makes the income growth more encouraging, however, is that the Wyandotte County growth is over $10,000 more than the calculated United States Consumer Price Index inflation between 2014 to 2019 ($35,686). 6 The income growth in Johnson County was over $8,000 more than its inflation between 2014 to 2019 ($80,855). The percentage of people aged 25 and older with a high school diploma or higher grew 0.3% in both counties (Wyandotte County: 78.9%; Johnson County: 96.0%). 5 However, the Wyandotte County growth rate can be of concern when considering that Wyandotte County has approximately 17% fewer people than Johnson County, therefore a greater increase would be desired to reduce healthcare disparity.