Blacks look to close health gap
With ACA in limbo, leaders take matters into their own hands
Barbers check customers’ blood pressures. Local corner stores stock shelves with fresh produce. Some preachers are even banning fried chicken from Sunday church dinners.
These offbeat — and occasionally extreme — steps are part of an nationwide effort aimed at closing the health gap between blacks and whites.
“We’re a sick crowd. ... Whatever is wrong in the country, we have it worse. We need to get health into the church,” said Donald Solomon, a founder of Congregations for Public Health and co-author of Body
and Soul, a healthy-living guide for church leaders.
Solomon, speaking to two dozen people at the Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church here, rattled off ailments ravaging Afri-canAmerican communities. African Americans, especially men, lag behind white counterparts on health problems such as diabetes, heart disease and HIV.
Nowhere is the disparity more apparent than in the Deep South, where many black Americans live and where there’s a long history of discrimination, poor health and insufficient insurance coverage.
As Congress debates how to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, experts, community activists and pastors say African-American men are the group most likely to be left behind.
Republican alternatives to the ACA considered in the House and Senate have included cuts to Medicaid, which experts say would hit black men especially hard.
Black men are more likely than white men to suffer chronic conditions like obesity, cancer and diabetes. They are less likely to have a regular doctor or health insurance, according to a report in 2012 by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which examined the disparity. The report found that 15.7% of white men were uninsured, compared with 28.8% of black men.
Medicaid expansions under the 2010 Affordable Care Act made many more men eligible for coverage, which increased their access to providers and medication, health experts say. That makes them especially vulnerable if Medicaid expansions are rolled back, said Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League.
Morial said health care legislation also should address broader social issues, including health education and poverty.
“Health care disparities is a complicated subject, and I don’t think any one bill ... would comprehensively address all of the issues,” he said.
Samantha Artiga, director of Disparities Policy Project and associate director for the Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said that under the ACA, also known as Obamacare, some groups, including communities of color, did get more health insurance coverage, but that alone didn’t fix the problem.
“Coverage alone is not going to do it,” she said. “It’s just one piece that will help reduce those disparities.”
Artiga said other factors, including gaps in income and education and access to healthy food, also “drive differences in health.”
While Congress hashes out a legislative approach, activists and health advocates are taking an al- ternative approach by targeting their audience directly at churches, universities, barbershops and hair salons.
With the help of a four-year grant from the CDC, the Minority Health and Health Disparities Research Center at the University of Alabama-Birmingham launched the Birmingham REACH for Better Health program in 2014.
In partnership with local organizations, the program aims to improve the health of African Americans in the city by addressing key factors in health disparities: nutrition and exercise.
In one effort, a partner works with corner store owners to make space on their shelves for fresh produce.
“This allows community members to have access to fresh fruits and vegetables,” said Theresa Wynn-Wallace, the project’s program director. “It’s a learning curve. Our partners had to start small and work their way up to having full displays in each store.”
Another effort involves physicians giving patients a “prescription to exercise” and connecting them to one of the city parks.
A few miles away from the university, more than 400 people registered for the Alabama Baptist State Congress of Christian Education conference. Participants packed classes that focused on diabetes, Alzheimer’s and HIV — health concerns that disproportionately affect blacks.
“We’re just trying to bring better health awareness to our community,” said Dorothy McAdory, who helped coordinate the conference and is chief administrative assistant to Rev. Jonathan McPherson, dean of the congress.
Some already had launched campaigns.
In lieu of Bible study at the Mercy Baptist Church in Mont- gomery, Ala., the church hosts a forum each quarter on health concerns including diabetes, hypertension and depression. The church also offers more healthy food options.
“We’re looking at the individual holistically as opposed to just looking at the spiritual,” said Johnny Hollis Jr., the church pastor. “There has to be a paradigm shift in the way we think about eating. There has to be a paradigm shift in the way we think about exercising.”
Every fifth Sunday at the Faith Missionary Baptist Church in Bessemer, Ala., Darlene Cotton checks the blood pressure of fellow churchgoers to complement the health topic of the day.
“We’re dying because of a lack of knowledge,” said Cotton, a nurse at the University of Alabama-Birmingham and the church’s health care coordinator. “Accessibility is one of the main things. ... A lot of times, we don’t even know about programs — or ask.”
Marian Little shocked the congregation at New Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church last year when she told members the menu would no longer include fried chicken.
“I said we’re becoming healthconscious, and we won’t have any fried chicken,” she recalled. “They said, ‘Fried chicken is gone?’ I said yes, get used to the baked chicken, and they did.”
The church also has substituted water for sugary drinks and yogurt for ice cream, along with holding exercise classes and stocking the community food pantry with healthy options.
Michael Wesley, pastor of the Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, which hosted the conference, said churches must step up.
“Clergy cannot just only be concerned about what goes on inside the church. We have to be concerned about the warfare that exists outside the church,” he said.
Shiloh started a community garden, hosted a six-week exercise program and offered baked chicken as an option to fried. On Sundays, churchgoers can get their blood pressure checked.
Wesley said, “The idea is to engage your congregation in healthy ministries and healthy lifestyle.”