Engaging the Disengaged Community: Opportunities, Strategies and Lessons Learned Working with African American Males

A Need for Focusing on Black Males’ Social and Health Issues

Recently, national organizations such as the American Public Health Association have initiated a National Campaign Against Racism to address racism as a underlying force of the social determinants of health and barriers to achieving health equity. The campaign calls for a clear shift in focus, a re–imagination of our traditional research methods, and identification of new and strengthening of existing community relationships and partnerships. More authentic and culturally embedded interventions must be developed that aim to change not just behaviors but systems. The field of public health has made some headway in addressing the root causes of health disparities; however, research on the prolific and constitutive lower health trajectories of black males lags behind this progress. One strategy to do this is to find unique ways to build relationships and partnerships within black communities and with organizations and programs that provide support and assistance to black males.

I, like many other researchers and practitioners, am being called to better understand the social statuses of black males as well as their access and use of health care services and health behaviors across the life course. The field of public health lacks the contextual evidence that provides us with meaningful processes of engagement and points us towards effective interventions. My work with black males aims to understand the healthy transitions to adulthood that will lead to better negotiations of gender identities and identify key resilience and support factors that lead to engagement in positive coping behaviors. I have used methods such as photovoice (described below) to engage middle school and high school black males in discussions about their health risks and threats to completing high school. These conversations helped me to understand that at these ages and developmental stages there are constant negotiations of their racial and gender identities, which are being shaped by interactions and relationships within their homes, neighborhoods, schools, churches, and in mentoring programs. These are the interactions and contexts public health professionals like myself need to be locate our work and interventions.

To advance research and practice to improve the health of black males, we have to be able to identify not only the barriers to healthy transitions across all life stages, but identify sources of resilience and support. Identifying a way to understand these influences within these various contexts could become part of the key to healthy identity development for black males and become an opportunity to re–structure how these contexts shape what some call hypermasculine behaviors that can be damaging and help community based organizations incorporate this evidence into their programs.

This central focus of my work began with my entrée into the study of black men’s health as a W.K. Kellogg Health Scholar (postdoctoral fellow) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. During this time I worked with a project focusing on cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk for black men in rural black churches in Orange County, North Carolina. This project included a partnership with a community–based organization and the local health department. Also, during my time in North Carolina I began working with middle school and high school boys around issues related to dropping out of high school and health risks. Currently, I am developing partnerships with community based organizations, a local health department, and health care service providers to increase health care access and service use for black men. These projects helped me to define some of the opportunities and lessons learned with working with black males and an opportunity to personally reflect on the effects of this work.

Personally, as I reflect on my professional development of this line of research I continuously raise questions about my life experiences differ from many black males I went to school with or lived within in my neighborhood. There are certainly individual, spiritual and family factors that contribute to the values I obtained and helped to shape the goals I set for myself. There was a supportive network as well as those who may have suggested I...