New York City’s health department is warning the public that contact with the criminal justice system — everything from police stops or searches to incarceration to having a jailed relative — poses a public health risk.

“The data show that involvement with the criminal justice system — even brief contact with the police or indirect exposure — is associated with lasting harm to people’s physical and mental health,” said health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot in a statement sent to BuzzFeed News.

The announcement by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene comes after San Francisco’s Health Commission took on incarceration as a public health issue in March, and Seattle essentially turned its juvenile justice system over to public health officials in 2017.

“What New York is doing is smart — people don’t often see how the health care system and criminal justice are interlinked,” University of Georgia sociologist Sarah Shannon, who studies the health effects of incarceration on prisoners and families, said. “But especially in our era of mass incarceration, there has been a lot of evidence they have to affect each other.”

The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene estimates around 577,000 people, 9% of New Yorkers, have been physically threatened or abused by the police. Overall, 29%, roughly 1.9 million people, report even being stopped, frisked, or questioned by the police.

Those people have higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, drug abuse, and mental illness, warns the department, which is starting a new public health campaign focused on educating health care workers about chronic health conditions linked to these patients. Around 27% of those formerly incarcerated, for example, reported poor mental health, compared with 13% among the never incarcerated (the national rate for mental illness is 19%). And 29% of those reporting threats or abuse by the police had poor physical health, compared with 12% of those who hadn’t.

The health department’s “Criminal Justice Action Kit” will be discussed with health care workers over the next month in around 160 primary care and family medicine practices in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Manhattan.

“We as a public health department have really been trying to frame criminal justice system involvement as an exposure,” health department epidemiologist Kimberly Zweig told BuzzFeed News. The department aims to raise awareness about the risks of long-term conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and depression in particular. The health department consulted on the effort with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, which last year started a $7.2 million initiative to improve housing, employment, and health conditions for people leaving jail.

“This is the first time we are reporting on the health implications of involvement with the criminal justice system in over a decade,” said Zweig.