Source: Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
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]]>On May 25, George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer. I was living in Minneapolis in April 1992 when the Rodney King verdict was announced. I remember sitting in my car in traffic on I35 in profound disappointment and partial disbelief. How could a video not have been enough to make a difference? That disbelief dissolved because I realized that it was yet another example of how systemic racism sustains itself.
Twenty-eight years later, hundreds of lives later, scores of videos, and a bloody waterfall of #sayhisname and #sayhername – and little has changed except the growing frequency of death at the hands of police as we see new videos and read new names weekly, if not daily. And those are just the stories that make the news.
The Center for African American Health (CAA Health) was established to support the health and wellness of African Americans precisely because of the persistent health disparities that have plagued us for generations. At CAA Health, not only do our Black Lives Matter, but supporting the quality of life of Black lives is our mission. We also know that racism is our public health crisis. The inequities across the various social determinants of health – health, mental health, education, income, life expectancy – all have the same root cause – Systemic racism.
Structural racism, white supremacy and anti-blackness have long been foundational building blocks in every aspect of American life – redlining, strategic food deserts, the preschool to prison pipeline – the list of systems and institutions that were designed to oppress our people goes on.
The peaceful protests undertaken by individuals in communities across the nation and around the world have sparked needed conversations in every corner of our society. Civic and social groups, companies, neighborhoods, and individuals are once again faced with discussing the truth of the inequities that exist in so many aspects of our society. Which is a nice beginning.
Systemic racism can no longer be something we try our best to endure or navigate. It must change. We are committed to working with other organizations with a similar focus to promote the care and well being of communities of color. We are also committed to working with any ally organizations sincerely committed to dismantling systemic racism and white supremacy. The days of insincere platitudes are long gone. This work can only be about urgent action to create enduring change.
Despite the risks of the COVID-19 pandemic, people of all ages and backgrounds are clearly saying that systemic racism and the unbridled brutality of law enforcement must end. So, we are gathering across the country, marching shoulder to shoulder, across the city and the state, raising our voices in peaceful protests, and confronting those who choose to use this platform for vandalism, violent outbursts, and civil unrest.
It is my hope that this time there will be a willingness to not only listen to the diverse voices across the country, and within our city, who are stepping up and stepping into the conversation – but to also begin to do what’s right. We cannot let society look away and continue the status quo. Now we must work in solidarity to condemn these injustices across every sector of our communities.
As an organization with a long history of working to increase resources to eradicate health disparities that have existed for far too long, CAA Health is part of the fabric of this community. We will continue to mobilize our neighbors and convene our many partners to address these injustices and the disparities that have continued to cause trauma, which has deepened the chasm of inequality.
In 1954 my uncle was murdered by his white coworkers, in what was called an “accident”. I grew up knowing that for us, harm can occur in an instant and without cause. I am a daughter, sister, niece, cousin, and friend to so many beautiful, brilliant, strong Black people. As a mother of two African American boys, I feel the heaviness of this time – this day – this hour. Despite the toxic stress, sorrow and anger of these past weeks, I remain determined and hopeful. We are a people grounded in spirit and we will continue to stand because ultimately ours will be a story of liberation.
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]]>The Center for African American Health is pleased to announce we have received funding from Signal Behavioral Health Network (Signal), a Colorado nonprofit organization responsible for providing an extensive scope of substance use disorder services on a regional basis, in the State of Colorado. Signal, in partnership with the State of Colorado, Department of Human Services, Office of Behavioral Health (OBH) has provided resources to the Center for African American Health (CAA Health) through the State Opioid Response (SOR) grant.
CAA Health will utilize grant resources to hire 2 Community Peer Recovery Navigators to connect people within our community to behavioral health services and perform outreach efforts to harm reduction organizations or other entities engaged in naloxone distribution, including withdrawal management facilities. CAA Health will also serve as a critical community convener of meetings focused on addressing opiate challenges in the African American communities in the Denver Metro Area.
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By Cara Marranzino, Mental Health Center Denver
As the community mental health authority for the City and County of Denver and the Rocky Mountain region’s largest provider of behavioral health services, serving over 20,000 persons annually, Mental Health Center of Denver is pleased to provide two Mental Health First Aid training courses in partnership with The Center for African American Health on August 28 and October 10.
On August 28, we will be offering Youth Mental Health First Aid, a course for adults who work and interact regularly with youth. It is designed to teach parents, family members, caregivers, teachers, school staff, peers, neighbors, health and human services workers, and other caring citizens how to help adolescents (age 12 – 18) who are experiencing addiction or a mental health challenge or crisis. The course introduces common mental health challenges for youth, reviews typical adolescent development, and offers a five-step action plan for how to help young people, in both crisis and non-crisis situations. Topics include anxiety, depression, substance use, disorders in which psychosis may occur, disruptive behavior disorders (including AD/HD), and eating disorders.
In any given year, one in five adults will experience a mental health issue. Unfortunately, many of these individuals are not well informed about how to recognize mental health problems, how to respond, or what treatments are available. Often, they delay getting help unless someone close to them suggests it. That’s why it’s critical to understand how to identify mental health and substance use issues and know how to support a loved one who may be struggling. To aid individuals in recognizing and assisting adults who may be experiencing a mental health crisis, we are partnering with The Center on October 10 to provide Mental Health First Aid for Adults. Just as CPR training allows a person to assist an individual following a heart attack, Mental Health First Aid training prepares a person to help someone who is experiencing a mental health crisis. Participants of the course learn a five-step action plan to help support an individual until professional help arrives. Topics covered include depression and mood disorders, anxiety disorders, trauma, psychosis and substance use disorders. Trainees are taught how to apply the action plan in a variety of situations.
At the Mental Health Center of Denver, we believe that people can and do get better, and recovery looks different for everyone. Studies from across the globe show that the Mental Health First Aid program saves lives, improves the mental health of the individual administering care as well as the one receiving it. Further, expanding awareness of mental illnesses and its treatments increases the number of people who get help and reduces overall social stigma towards individuals with mental illness.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Cara Marranzino at Mental Health Center of Denver, cara.marranzino@mhcd.org.
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]]>The post Stopping Childhood Obesity with the Community’s Help appeared first on The Center for African American Health.
]]>by Rochelle Cason-Wilkerson, MD
I’m excited to discuss the innovative and exciting things to come as The Center for African American Health continues to develop partnerships and collaborations to improve the health of the community. The Center, now a member of the Family Resource Center Association of Colorado, has programming which touches lives from early childhood to the elderly. My excitement extends not only from my current role as an executive board member for The Center but as a pediatrician, research scientist, wife, and mother.
As a physician-scientist, my passion is stopping the epidemic of childhood obesity which disproportionately affects the Black community. I believe that by including the voice of the community, we can develop programs that will make a true impact. Working with the CEO/Executive Director for The Center, Deidre Johnson, we applied for a Colorado Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (CCTSI) grant to enhance community engagement around the problem of childhood obesity. The prevalence of obesity in non-Hispanic black children, aged 2 – 19, is 22% for African American children versus 14.1% for whites. For African American children aged 2 – 14, in Colorado, the rate of obesity and those overweight is 36% versus 22% for white children. There is still much work to be done to address these health disparities.
This grant serves to develop a community/academic partnership so that each entity better understands what the other does and how we can work together to make the community healthier. The Center has a long history of working with the University of Colorado; however, this project will be the first of its kind in that it is centered around African American children. What we hope to develop from this process is a sustainable, culturally tailored, community-based intervention to help African American children who have an unhealthy weight. While there are already evidence-based interventions in the community, many were initially developed using a population of middle-income Caucasian families. Our researchers have worked to tailor these programs to minority populations who have experienced minimal improvement in weight and health. We know—now more than ever—is it imperative to truly develop an intervention that is created by us for us.
This project is just the first step in gathering community input; asking the hard questions to determine what is needed to help our children obtain and maintain a healthy weight. And we are confident progress will occur because The Center for African American Health is a willing, able, and apt partner with the University of Colorado School of Medicine to accomplish this goal. I welcome the community to join us in this endeavor.
About the Author:
Dr. Rochelle Cason-Wilkerson is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Section of Nutrition. She also currently works in Lifestyles Medicine Clinic at Children’s Hospital of Colorado, a tertiary care weight management clinic. She is married and mother of two rambunctious boys. Originally from California, she now has worked and lived in Colorado for the last 10 years and calls Aurora home.
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]]>By Toni Baruti, Board Member for The Center for African American Health
May 23, 2018 was the date that forever changed our lives. My stepfather, Robert Charles Ennis, III was scheduled for a routine colonoscopy. When I arrived to pick him up for his appointment, he didn’t seem like his normal vibrant self. He said he was ok but was tired and wanted to reschedule. I insisted that he go to the appointment. As they took him to the back for the procedure, I went to the building lobby to get a cup of coffee. Before I got to the front of the line my phone began to ring. “Mrs. Baruti, we need to come back to the office.” They told me my stepfather had an abnormal EKG and would be transported over to the emergency room. Tests were run and he was admitted. The prognosis was five clogged arteries, lung disease, and multiple myeloma. Six months to a year life expectancy. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How did we get here? Where were the signs? As it turns out, the signs were there, but he hid them and ignored them in order to continue being the family’s pillar, the best friend, father, father-in-law, and grandfather. He was indeed our center. From the first time I met my stepfather, 38 years ago at the age of seven, I’ve known him to be a strong, independent, and caring man; always selfless and making sure everyone else was alright. He didn’t want us to ever worry.
I knew the time was coming near when he would need to let go of some of his independence and let us take care of him. As I watched him decline, I often wondered if there was something that could have prevented this outcome; something that could have prolonged his life. A healthier diet? More exercise? I will never know, and it is too late. But it is not too late to educate those still with us. In honor of my beloved stepfather Robert C. Ennis, III, we have partnered with The Center of African American Health to present a Party for a Purpose. On July 6, 2019, we will celebrate the life of my stepfather and raise funds for the Center for African American to continue their mission of improving the health and well-being of infants, seniors, and everyone in between by providing culturally sensitive health education and health promotion programs. This fundraiser will specifically bring awareness to men’s health and preventative care.
Please join us July 6, 2019 at the Forney Museum of Transportation, 7 – 10pm. Tickets are on sale now through Eventbrite.
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]]>The post What’s New for You at The Center for African American Health appeared first on The Center for African American Health.
]]>By Deidre Johnson, CEO & Executive Director
In 1997, under the leadership of Grant Jones, The Metro Denver Black Church Initiative was established to help build the capacity of Black churches in providing programs for at-risk youth, academically struggling students, and ex-offenders as well as health education and health screening programs. In 2005, the Initiative made the decision to focus its work solely on the health disparities facing African Americans and became The Center for African American Health (The Center).
While The Center’s strategies have evolved over the years, its purpose has remained constant due to a persistent need within our African American communities, which suffer higher rates of illness, disability, and premature death from diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. I was selected by the Board of Directors to lead The Center in 2015 upon the retirement of our Founder. During the past three years we have been working to expand services to meet the needs of our community’s children, youth, and families. And we’ve engaged in a great deal of “behind-the-scenes” work to evolve how The Center can work in new ways that will help us address health disparities even more effectively. The following are some of the exciting new developments:
- Our new status as a Family Resource Center has equipped us with a variety of new tools, assessments, and best practices to help us offer comprehensive services to families and expand our resource and referral network.
- We’re proud to announce our new Community Health and Wellness Navigators, who connect individuals and families to resources and service providers in the areas of health insurance literacy, housing, food and clothing banks, parent education/support, transportation, and much more.
- Our BeHeard Mile High community health panel will continue to help us increase the understanding of community health assets and challenges; and deepen our partnerships with health equity advocacy and policy leaders to pursue long-term strategies that will improve access to care and the health and wellbeing of our community.
- We’re seeking families to participate in our Strengthening African American Families Program, a program enrolling families of children ages 0-3 and 3-5 that will offer skills training intervention for parents, children, and entire families.
- Through our Youth Civic Engagement Program, we are investing in the personal and civic growth of African American youth who will embark on a two-week learning trip to Uganda in June and develop their own community project here in Denver.
- Learning to Live Well provides an overview of the terminology used in health insurance coverage, explains the differences in use based on type of insurance, and offers participants basic tools to create a personal wellness plan. Sessions are held throughout Denver and Aurora.
- Through our Mental Health First Aid certification course, participants become equipped to identify when someone might be struggling with a mental health problem and how to connect them with appropriate support and resource.
We’d love to connect with you. Contact us at info@caahealth.org or (303) 355-3423, visit our website—www.caahealth.org, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to engage with The Center for African American Health and learn how we can support you and your family.
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]]>The post What We’re Reading: Unhealthy state of affairs regarding Black health appeared first on The Center for African American Health.
]]>By Glenn Ellis
There is no disagreement that African Americans have worse health outcomes across the board. Researchers, scientists, sociologists, and doctor all agree.
Data and statistics reflect the dismal reality that if you are African American, you will be more likely to die at birth, die giving birth, grow up sicker, be diagnosed of a life-threatening illness later, and die sooner.
What is less known, and agreed upon, is the fact that the determining factors for all of these outcomes, is not because one is African American, but because of what are known as social determinants of health.
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]]>The post Why Is It So Risky to Be a Black Mother? appeared first on The Center for African American Health.
]]>By Dwyer Gunn
Reprinted with permission by The Colorado Trust
When Deidre Johnson gave birth to her first child—a baby boy—in July 2003, she and her husband were ecstatic. It had taken the 35-year-old a while to conceive, but the labor and birth had gone quickly and relatively smoothly. The new family of three went home the next morning.
By that afternoon, however, Johnson, who is African-American, was starting to feel ill. Her chest was hurting, and she was having trouble breathing. She drove herself back to the emergency room at the Denver metro-area hospital where she’d given birth. Hospital staff took her vitals, including her blood pressure. While her blood pressure reading was technically within normal limits, Johnson, a runner, knew it was too high for her—her blood pressure normally hovered at 90/70.
When Johnson, who holds degrees from Princeton and Yale, raised concerns about her blood pressure reading, a nurse dismissed her, saying: “You people always have high blood pressure.”
Johnson was told to go home and rest. By the next day, however, Johnson had developed a painful headache and was beginning to retain water. This time, when Johnson showed up at the emergency room, she was admitted immediately—her blood pressure was well beyond normal limits, she had developed swelling in her brain, and she was on the verge of kidney and liver failure.
The hospital ran countless tests, but a diagnosis remained elusive until Johnson’s father called a friend, an obstetrician, in California. The physician’s message was clear and urgent: “She has postpartum preeclampsia. She needs magnesium, or she’s going to have a stroke.”
Johnson recovered only after a week in the hospital’s intensive care unit.
***
Today, Johnson is CEO and executive director of The Center for African American Health, which provides culturally sensitive health education for African-Americans in the Denver metro area. (She also was formerly a program officer at The Colorado Trust.) Johnson is familiar with the statistics that show that Black mothers are at increased risk for postpartum complications and even death.
For Black women in America, pregnancy and childbirth can be dangerous undertakings, thanks to both the health effects of a lifetime of racism and a health care system that the evidence suggests continues to discriminate against people of color. This is true even for well-educated Black women. Despite educational attainment being a well-documented and significant social determinant of health, professional accolades can offer Black mothers little protection against dangerous complications of pregnancy and childbirth, or the vagaries of a medical system still plagued by conscious and unconscious racial bias.
“Even with an advanced degree, Black women have poorer outcomes than white women without high school diplomas,” Johnson says. “As the researchers splice and dice the data more, it’s becoming more and more clear that the stress of being a Black female in America affects outcomes.”
Nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the maternal mortality rate for African-American women—43.5 deaths per 100,000 live births—is over three times higher than the rate for white women. And in recent years, both the U.S. maternal mortality rate and the rate of severe maternal complications (such as the type Johnson suffered) have actually been on the rise for women of all races in the United States.
These grim racial disparities are echoed in infant outcomes. In 2016, the infant mortality rate for Black infants in the United States was 11.4 deaths per 1,000 live births—more than twice the rate of that for both Hispanic infants (5.0 deaths per 1,000 live births) and white infants (4.9 deaths per 1,000 live births).
The preterm birth rate, a major contributor to infant mortality, for African-American women is 14 percent, in comparison to only 9 percent for non-Hispanic white women.
Colorado generally ranks well, in comparison to other U.S. states, on measures of both maternal and infant outcomes. According to a 2017 publication from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), there were 145 pregnancy-associated deaths in the state between 2008 and 2013. (Pregnancy-associated deaths include all deaths in which the victim was pregnant, as well as deaths occurring within one year of the end of pregnancy, including those caused by factors unrelated to pregnancy, such as car crashes.) Only 21 of those 145 deaths were categorized as “pregnancy-related” (i.e., caused by a factor related to pregnancy).
The overall pregnancy-related mortality ratio in Colorado has, however, increased in recent years—from none in 2008, to 6.2 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2013, still significantly below the national average. Yet not all women in Colorado are impacted equally: those who die during or after childbirth, according to CDPHE, are also “significantly more likely to have a high school education or less, have incomes under $15,000 a year, live in rural areas, be unmarried, and be black.”
A fuller picture of racial disparities in maternal and infant health in Colorado emerges in the data on infant outcomes. In Colorado, according to data from CDPHE, the infant mortality rate among Black infants in 2016 was 10.7 deaths (per 1,000 live births), 5.9 for Hispanic infants and 4.0 for white infants, as the chart below illustrates:
In Colorado, as in the rest of the country, prematurity (and related complications) is a major driver of infant mortality, accounting for 33 percent of deaths. And African-Americans in Colorado exhibited higher preterm birth rates—11.6 percent, as compared to 8.2 percent among white, non-Hispanic births—and higher rates of low birth-weight babies.
There’s little doubt that socioeconomic factors contribute to the worse maternal and infant outcomes observed among African-Americans, in both the United States and Colorado. African-American mothers are more likely than white mothers to live in poverty; more likely to live in low-income neighborhoods; less likely to have a college degree; and less likely to have health insurance and access to prenatal care—all factors that researchers have linked to poor maternal and infant health outcomes.
But a sizeable body of evidence has also demonstrated that wealth and education do not protect African-American women and their children. In a 1992 paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers compared infant mortality rates of Black and white infants with college-educated parents. They found that the infant mortality rate among Black infants with college-educated parents was almost twice as high as among white infants. The Black infants were also much more likely to have low birth weights, a factor the researchers identified as a major driver of the disparity in mortality rates.
In other words: Even when typically significant variables like educational attainment and wealth are not a factor, Black women and their newborns are still at a higher risk for worse health outcomes. And the stress from chronic exposure to racism is now suspected to be a root cause.
***
Thirteen months after her first harrowing experience as a mother, Johnson gave birth to her second child—another boy—at a different facility with a different obstetrician. Again, Johnson and her son were discharged quickly. And again, things went south shortly after she was discharged.
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” Johnson says. “I was in Toys ‘R’ Us buying a double stroller. And I remember just feeling this sudden weight on my chest and having to sit down.”
Once at the hospital, Johnson was admitted quickly. Despite her history of postpartum preeclampsia, however, a diagnosis and treatment was not forthcoming— as Johnson remembers it, the hospital was waiting for her obstetrician to show up and authorize treatment.
“The weird thing about it is that, even though they listened to me, they acted like I didn’t know what I was talking about,” Johnson says. “I kept telling them to look at my records—that this is what was happening. I told them I needed magnesium before things started to get worse. I was speaking their language. I was saying, ‘I’m starting to get a vascular headache. You need to get a urine sample because I’m sure I’m dumping protein.’”
Meanwhile, Johnson kept get sicker. At one point, she was admitted to a cardiac unit because her heart rate dropped to a dangerously low level. Again, it wasn’t until her father intervened—threatening to call a lawyer and file a lawsuit—that the hospital snapped into action, assigning her case to a new doctor (the hospital’s head of obstetrics), who promptly diagnosed her with postpartum preeclampsia and treated her.
“It was just so frustrating because I kept saying, ‘If you would simply look at what happened to me last time, you would know what to do,’” says Johnson.
“I don’t know enough about hospital culture and procedures to say with total certainty,” she says, “but my gut feeling is that I would have been treated very differently if I were a white woman.”
***
Researchers have amassed extensive evidence of racial bias in medical care, including the kind that Johnson believes she experienced. A lengthy report published in 2003 by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences concluded that “[a] large body of published research reveals that racial and ethnic minorities experience a lower quality of health services, and are less likely to receive even routine medical procedures than are white Americans.”
Beyond the health care bias, researchers also now suspect that the racism Black women experience in their day-to-day lives, even before they’re pregnant, damages their health and that of their children—the epitome of what is now widely known as “toxic stress.” Martha Hargraves, a professor emeritus at the University of Texas and a co-author (with Carol Hogue, one of the authors of the 1992 NEJM paper on infant mortality, and Karen Scott Collins) of a book called Minority Health in America, has studied both historic and current racial disparities in infant mortality.
“There are just so many stresses that African-American women experience,” explains Hargraves, who is African-American. Some of the many examples: “Not having a safe place to live; not being able to walk on the street without worrying about your safety; worrying about not having your husband or significant other come home if he’s the wrong color; not being able to work your way up the professional ladder, or to not see anyone that looks like you working their way up the ladder.”
Researchers like Hargraves theorize that the toxic stress of a lifetime of those discriminatory interactions can affect maternal and infant health—predisposing African-American women to trauma-related mental health issues and complications such as preeclampsia and preterm birth. In a review paper for Epidemiological Review, Hogue and Michael R. Kramer highlighted a number of papers that have documented a link between reported experiences of racial discrimination and low birth-weight rates and preterm birth rates; two such studies found a “40%–80% elevated risk of preterm birth associated with perceived racism or discrimination.”
Like most Black Americans, Johnson has experienced racism from a very young age.
When Johnson was six, her father, a successful entrepreneur, broke a racially restrictive covenant to become the first African-American to purchase a home in Denver’s upscale Crestmoor neighborhood. The family’s new neighbors made it clear that Johnson and her family were not welcome.
It took Johnson decades to realize that her bone-deep reluctance to socialize with neighbors over the years likely stemmed from those early experiences. It took her just as long to process how a lifetime of those kinds of experiences may well have contributed to the postpartum preeclampsia she experienced after the births of her children.
“There are so many things you’re just used to navigating and dealing with—it becomes your normal,” said Johnson, reflecting on how life experiences may have affected her health. “You’re like the frog and the boiling pot, and you just adjust and don’t realize the damage it’s doing to you while it’s happening.”
The pathways through which stress may impact maternal and infant health outcomes are myriad. Arlene Geronimus, a professor at the University of Michigan, first proposed her theory of “weathering” in 1992, hypothesizing that “the health of African-American women may begin to deteriorate in early adulthood as a physical consequence of cumulative socioeconomic disadvantage.” The theory stems from the fact that African-American infants born to teen mothers exhibit lower mortality rates than those born to older mothers (the reverse is true for white infants).
“Aging, of course, increases the risk of maternal morbidity, and as a result infant mortality and morbidity,” explains Carol Hogue, now a professor at Emory University. “Even just by chronologic age, older women are at greater risk of death and having pregnancies that are complicated. But this aging process is speeded up when women have to deal with extra stresses.”
Researchers have also begun to explore other pathways through which the toxic stress of racism may drive poor outcomes. Hogue, for example, is an investigator on a project focused on the microbiome, and on another project focused on the epigenetic determinants of preterm birth. She is also exploring in her research how infection and inflammatory processes may contribute to racial disparities in outcomes.
But for all the unanswered questions that remain, Martha Hargraves points out that there are plenty of things that providers and public health officials can do now to affect change.
“We need to look at social supports that reduce some of the stressors of working two jobs and of facing discrimination at work,” Hargraves says. “We need to look at developing new tools for identifying high-risk pregnancies and incorporating the weathering hypothesis into that assessment. We need to do a better job at conducting research on the causes of prematurity by expanding the model to include social context. And we need to have a look at alternative medical approaches that we do not currently utilize but have proven historically to be effective.”
Listening to Black women might be another good place to start.
“One thing that I was clearly aware of was that I wasn’t being listened to [by hospital staff]—my knowledge of my own body and person was ignored,” Johnson says. “I remember seeing the notes that they took in my [hospital] chart the second time. … They described me as a very affable, educated African-American woman. But they still didn’t listen to me.”
As the leader of the Center for African American Health, Johnson is working to shift the health care system’s treatment of Black patients at all life stages. The Center currently deploys community health and patient navigators to help patients communicate constructively with their health care providers, and is arming patients with more information about the effects of toxic stress. Johnson says that providers also need to approach Black patients differently.
“Doctors need to keep in mind that everybody has a story, and they need to get to know the patient rather than bringing in all these assumptions,” Johnson says. “You can’t help people you don’t see.”
Dwyer Gunn
Journalist
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