Archive for the ‘Health Disparities’ Category
September 16th, 2009
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The 6th annual Umoja 5K (8/29) was a great success. More than 250 people turned out to participate in this year’s event. Teams representing Holy Savior, Via Christi, the Links, Tabernacle Bible Church, and many others also came out to run/walk together.
This year, several of the sponsoring organizations (including the Wichita NAACP) donated funds to sponsor Youth participation in the event with the goal of addressing the issue of childhood obesity. Approximately 50 youth participated in the timed event.
Special thanks goes out Brenda Davis and Maryon Habtemarian who came together once again and put on a first class event for the community…
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The Wichita Branch NAACP has partnered with the American Heart Association and the Wichita Black Nurses Association in the ‘Power to End Stroke’ Campaign.
‘Power To End Stroke’ is an education and awareness campaign that embraces and celebrates the culture, energy, creativity and lifestyles of Americans. It unites people to help make an impact on the high incidence of stroke within their communities.
Power To End Stroke was created in 2006 by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association to help reach the ASA mission to reduce stroke and risk of stroke by 25% by 2010. It was also meant to raise critical awareness within the African American population. Heart disease and stroke are major health risks for all people, but African Americans are at particularly high risk. Consider this:
- Blacks have almost twice the risk of first-ever strokes compared to whites.
- Blacks have higher death rates for stroke compared to whites.
- The prevalence of high blood pressure in African Americans in the United States is the highest in the world.
To take the pledge and join the Power to End Stroke movement, visit the link on our header.
Sign up and join the cause today!
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As early as 2007, I began writing about the US Commission on Civil Rights and their tragic decline from a once powerful fact-finding and investigative agency into an ironic caricature of its former self. ( See HERE and see HERE) Through a series of Bush-era politically motivated appointments, the 8-member Commission is now composed of 6 conservatives who are ideologically opposed to the goals and precepts of the American Civil Rights movement.
The Agency that once challenged the Federal Government and Law Enforcement to constructively deal with issues of Voter disenfranchisement, Domestic Violence, and the excesses and abuses of the Criminal Justice System, has been turned on its head. It has spent most of the last few years investigating the effectiveness of HBCU’s, developing guidance for school districts to achieve ‘Unitary Status’ and end their deseg programs, attacking affirmative action, and most recently formally opposing the employee free choice act.
In 2007, the conservative majority on the Commission released a Briefing Report on school segregation which essentially stated that the DOJ should continue in their efforts to assist districts in achieving ‘unitary status’ wherein they’d be free from the strictures of Brown vs Board or previous court orders brought about through civil rights or discrimination lawsuits. The two dissenting Commissioners, Yaki and Melendez, released a statement in which they wrote, “The quality of the agency’s reports has declined because it has tried to do too much with too little. Hour-and-a-half long monthly (or sometimes bimonthly) briefings with a few guest speakers can at best do nothing more than recycle commonly known truths about civil rights problems. At worst, such briefings serve as thinly-veiled political cover for the Commission majority to issue ideological policy statements to influence pending legislation, administrative decisions or reviews, and judicial cases. It is shameful to trade on the Commission’s past reputation for quality work in this way.”
Well, now it seems they’re at it again. This time, the US Commission on Civil Rights is releasing a new Briefing report in which they attack the proposed Health Care Reform efforts as ‘racially discriminatory’ because several of the draft bills being floated around Congress have provisions to specifically address Health Disparities. The conservative majority on the US Commission on Civil Rights views any effort to address issues within a specific racial or ethnic group as a “race-based” remedy and therefore deems said efforts as preferential to those they seek to address.
African Americans have the shortest life expectancy of any racial or ethnic group in America. African Americans have statistically higher rates of hypertension, stroke, diabetes, HIV, perinatal diseases, pancreatic cancer, stomach cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer, SIDS, low birth weight babies, etc… YET health care Access as a Civil Right has never come up on the Commission’s radar. But the fact that draft versions of a Health Care reform bill would seek to address these issues by promoting and encouraging ‘cultural competency’ among health care providers has managed to summon the Commission into action.
The provision that has raised their ire reads in part:
The secretary, “shall design and implement the payment mechanisms and policies under this section in a manner that — (1) seeks to reduce health disparities (including racial, ethnic and other disparities).” (House Bill Section 224)
The notion that targeted spending is inherently discriminatory is simply false. The GI bill is not ‘discriminatory’ against non-veterans. Social Security is not ‘discriminatory’ against the young. Breast Cancer research is not ‘discriminatory’ against men. Prostate Cancer research is not ‘discriminatory’ against women… We as a nation have often tended to issues that have some disparate impact on one or more segments of our society. And in a matter as sensitive as health care and health dispaities; one where the disparities are literally matters of life and death; we should expect no less…
Wade Henderson, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Leadership Council on Civil Rights described this recent effort by saying, ”The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is overstepping its bounds yet again with another slanted and incorrect interpretation of logical and constitutional standards,”. The group is “injecting themselves in the health care debate without any expertise and understanding of how the training in the House bill will work.”
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Posted in Civil Rights, Health Disparities, Legislative issues, News
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Tags: Wichita
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