Minority Health and Health Equity Archive

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/21769

Welcome to the Minority Health and Health Equity Archive (MHHEA), an electronic archive for digital resource materials in the fields of minority health and health disparities research and policy. It is offered as a no-charge resource to the public, academic scholars and health science researchers interested in the elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities.

Browse

Author: search.filters.author.Ford, AngelaSubject: search.filters.subject.community outreach

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The Use of Family Health Histories to Address Health Disparities in an African American Community
    (2007) Vogel, Kristen J.; Murthy, Vinaya S.; Dudley, Beth; Grubs, Robin E.; Gettig, Elizabeth; Ford, Angela; Thomas, Stephen B.
    African Americans continue to suffer from health disparities. The Center for Minority Health (CMH) within the University of Pittsburgh has the mission to eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities. CMH has designed and implemented the Family Health History (FHH) Initiative. The FHH Initiative places geneticcounseling graduate students in the African American community to provide risk assessments and emphasize the importance of family history as it pertains to disease prevention. The FHH Initiative also allows participants to enroll into the Minority Research Recruitment Database (MRRD). This enables CMH to alert individuals to available research participation opportunities. In the first year of this program, 225 African Americans completed their family health histories. More than 60% of individuals enrolled in the MRRD. The authors report their initial successes and challenges of an initiative that incorporates awareness of family history information, proper screening guidelines, behavior modification recommendations, and support for participation in clinical research.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Bring a health professional to the people day: A community outreach strategy for mobilizing African American barber shops and beauty salons as health promotion sites
    (2004) Browne, Mario; Garner, Victoria; Howard, Raymond; Reddick, Karen; Williams, Candice; Berget, Rachael; Sansing, Veronica; Gist, Maya; Taliaferro, Devon; Ford, Angela; Duncan, Edgar; Thomas, Stephen
    Despite an abundance of health care resources in the region, Pittsburgh’s African American community continues to suffer disproportionately from a burden of preventable diseases. Although there is no shortage of information about how to prevent these diseases, the African American community is clearly not benefiting from it. One of the reasons for this discrepancy is that health messages are not being delivered in the most effective and culturally appropriate manner. In September of 2002 the Department of Health and Human Services kicked off their “Take a Loved One to the Doctor Day”, a national effort to promote health and wellness in the African American community. At the University of Pittsburgh, Graduate School of Public Health, the Center for Minority Health (CMH) adopted this model and tailored it to meet local needs by partnering with barbershops, beauty salons, and health professionals to create “Bring a Health Professional to the People Day”. Our strategy was designed with the idea that trusted community members such as barbers and beauticians can be good vehicles for disseminating accurate, evidence-based health promotion messages, especially relating to preventable diseases, such as hypertension and diabetes. The CMH partnered with barber shops and beauty salons. The focus was providing health screening and health information to patrons of these shops. Health professionals were recruited via website registration. The purpose of this presentation is to demonstrate an innovative approach of the use of trusted community members to promote health and wellness in the African American community.