The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Mercy Health tackles ethnic disparities
Mercy Health Lorain is working on an innovative community campaign designed to identify health disparities among minority communities.
United in Glory will follow 25 people from now through May 2021 to conduct bi-monthly and monthly screenings.
The program is funded through a grant from the Sisters of Humility of Mary, which received CARES Act stimulus money from the federal government.
Spearheaded by Mercy HealthLorain Director of Community Health Catherine Woskobnick and Mercy-Health physician Dr. Robert Thomas.
In collaboration with Lorain County Public Health, they developed a program in response to the heightened levels of novel coronavirus cases among the African American community.
Woskobnick said in developing and brainstorming ways to help through their parish nursing program, local leaders were sharing their concerns about the accelerated levels of chronic disease within the sphere of conversations about racial justice and disparities that were happening across the country in the wake of the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery.
Thomas said he was honored to be in an environment that has the leadership of Woskobnick, Mercy Health Lorain Market President Ed Oley and parish nurses in responding to the need to take steps to address chronic diseases.
“We recognize that of the 15 million Americans who have type-2 diabetes, 11 percent of them are African American,” Thomas said. “We recognize that 86 percent of African Americans will have hypertension.
“We recognize that there are disparities, and we recognize that nothing is being done about it.”
In working with local churches, United in Glory has a cross- section of the community and have worked with the Lorain County Urban League and El Centro de Servicios So
ciales to establish a framework for community health education among Lorain County minority communities.
Through the monthly screenings, the 25 participants will have blood work done free of charge in looking at a number of factors:
• Assessing blood pressure
• Blood Platelet levels – diabetes
• Cholesterol
• Weight
• Height
• Body mass index “Our goal is with people like Dr. Thomas, to give them that number and we will help them understand their numbers,” Woskobnick said.
Each participant will get individualized coaching and they set up health goals and get these essential conversations about health and risk factors started, she said.
The hope is for the program to have a ripple effect in the community, Woskobnick said.
As a primary care physician, Thomas said he is there to provide a listening ear and help set people up on a path to better health in taking steps to identify and address chronic diseases.
“It’s really a program that’s going to care for the body, mind and spirit,” he said.
Developing relationships with patients will open the door to conversations about a broad area of health issues, like cervical cancer and importance of mammograms and colonoscopy and pinpointing conversations to the needs of underrepresented populations.
In the process of evaluations, United in Glory will identify barriers to health such as exercise and access to healthier food.
The effort will provide resources to fill those gaps.
“It’s about that personal conversation, respecting where people are at and then connecting the dots,” Woskobnick said.
In assessing the data it will enable local health care officials to better understand how to target services and programs to improve overall health quality, she said.