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Akron meeting strives to find strategy to close wellness gap for blacks
By Tracy Wheeler
Beacon Journal medical writer
Published on Thursday, Sep 11, 2008
Those who attended Wednesday's Local Conversation on Minority Health have heard it all before: African-Americans are less likely to have health insurance, less likely to have health conditions diagnosed early, and ultimately, more likely to die younger than whites.
What people wanted to hear on Wednesday were not more statistics, but a strategy to fix the problem of racial health disparities.
''We know what the contributing factors are. We know that health gap continues to widen. We know disparities still exist,'' said Daisy Alford-Smith, CEO of Girls Scouts of Northeast Ohio and former director of Summit County's Department of Job and Family Services. ''I'm at the point where I'm sick and tired of hearing these things.
''We need more than just strategies but a detailed plan of how to implement them. Don't keep talking about it. Do it.''
The daylong meeting, arranged by the Akron Health Department's Office of Minority Health, attracted about two dozen people from local agencies, community groups and hospitals.
At the end of the session, the group's recommendations boiled down to three key points:
• Better collaboration among local agencies. Everyone should take a ''no wrong door'' approach to helping those in need, meaning that even if some
one comes to the wrong place for help, they'll be connected with — not just referred to — the proper agency. That way, ''people find the help they need,'' said Liz Piatt, an assistant professor in community health sciences at the Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy.
• Improve diversity of the health-care work force, by recruiting minority students into health professions. Patients are more likely to open up to health-care providers who look like them, and doctors are more likely to understand various issues facing patients who come from backgrounds similar to their own, said Sloan Sanford, coordinator of the minority health office.
• Do a better job of educating the public about what services are already available, using as many avenues as possible — such as TV ads, grocery bag inserts or text messaging.
Other notes, ideas and information from Wednesday's meeting will be sent to the Ohio State Commission on Minority Health within the next few weeks, Piatt said.
The challenge with health disparities, though, is that there's no single reason why they exist. Rather, experts say, the disparity comes from a complex set of social, economic, educational, cultural and racial circumstances, including a lack of health insurance, a distrust of the medical establishment, poverty, poor personal choices, and inferior health care. Environmental factors also play an important part, such as living in neighborhoods that lack grocery stores with fresh produce or have a high number of old homes containing lead paint.
Even that can be a simplistic explanation, though.
Statistics supplied by the Akron Health Department show that, unlike whites, blacks gain no health benefits by moving up the economic ladder. Blacks living in neighborhoods above the poverty line lived no longer than blacks in impoverished areas, dying at essentially the same age — 67.1 years compared with 66.8 years.
By comparison, though, whites living in Summit County's more well-to-do neighborhoods live to an average age of 76.4, compared with just 67.1 for blacks in the same type of neighborhoods — a gap of 9.3 years.
Tracy Wheeler can be reached at 330-996-3721 or tawheeler@thebeaconjournal.com.
Those who attended Wednesday's Local Conversation on Minority Health have heard it all before: African-Americans are less likely to have health insurance, less likely to have health conditions diagnosed early, and ultimately, more likely to die younger than whites.
Get the full article here.
Comments
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Vatican , It
Posted 12:46 PM, 09/11/2008
No comments here, Bruce...
Sterling, Oh
Posted 03:33 PM, 09/11/2008
Disqualifying fathers with white skin for affirmative action does not heal racial health of blacks.
Posted 09:42 PM, 09/12/2008
Racial health disparity is the result of black culture's primitive views on health.
