Sandy Kleffman

<p>Nonprofit hospitals receive millions of dollars in tax breaks each year to care for the poor and uninsured. But do they do enough to justify their lucrative, tax-exempt status? Crunch the numbers to find out.</p>

<p>Larry Adelman, executive producer of the "Unnatural Causes" documentary series, and Dr. Anthony Iton, senior vice president for healthy communities at the California Endowment, will be joining Bay Area News Group&nbsp;for a live online chat about health inequities.</p><p>The discussion will begin at noon&nbsp;today at <a href="http://www.ContraCostaTimes.com/life-expectancy">www.ContraCostaTimes.c…;. Please feel free to join us.</p><p>This is part of a four-part series on health inequities that we began publishing Sunday.</p>

<p>Bay Area News Group will begin a four part series on health inequities Sunday that will feature ZIP code maps revealing wide disparities in life expectancy, asthma hospitalizations, heart diease and cancer rates.</p><p>The project, by reporters Sandy Kleffman and Suzanne Bohan, found striking health differences among ZIP codes just a few miles apart.</p><p>Even middle-class neighborhoods are affected, the analysis reveals. Middle-class areas have longer life expectancies than the poorest neighborhoods, but fall years short of life expectancies in the wealthiest areas.</p>