Eliminating Health Disparities: Conversations with Blacks in America, and: Race, Ethnicity, and Health: A Public Health Reader (review)
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Eliminating Health Disparities: Conservations with Blacks in America, an open and honest appraisal of health disparities in the United States, offers ideas about viable solutions to some of these compelling national problems. This compilation is a composite of years of work experience, observations, and research, expressing in a conversational style a wide array of views on and knowledge about health disparities. These discussions generate new ways to assess public health and the health or non-health of African Americans.
The authors are professionals, some national leaders, in a variety of public health and health-related fields. A strong feature of the collection is the style that moves easily between engagement and empowerment, allowing the reader to assume the roles of advocate and activist.
Carol Easley Allen, the editor, is currently a professor and chair of the department of nursing at Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama. She formerly held positions at Atlantic Union College (Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty) and The Catholic University of America School of Nursing (Associate Dean for Academic Affairs). She served as chair and president of the American Public Health Association and is a vocal advocate for the medically underserved, speaking across the country. Her research focus is community-based prevention, diabetes, and stroke.
Eliminating Health Disparities: Conversations with Blacks in America takes a unique approach to discussing health disparities in that it consists almost entirely of interviews with Black leaders in public health. The collection begins with a comprehensive overview of the health status of African Americans and engages the readers to reflect on a discomforting question: As African Americans lose their position as the largest minority group in the U.S., what consequences can we expect on the health and health care for African Americans?
The overview reminds us of the hardships of the slave trade, the transportation and resettlement in foreign lands and the impact of these events on the African [End Page 670] Diaspora (Blacks), especially those who emigrated to the U.S. from African and Caribbean countries, as well as Canada, and their descendents. Each group brings with it its own regional customs and health beliefs.
Blacks live in every region of the U.S. but predominantly in the South and in urban areas and, regardless of region, most often in poor neighborhoods. This book illustrates the fact that health disparities ultimately concern more than health, and can serve as a microcosm of the social realities in this country. African Americans are disproportionately affected by heart disease, cancer, HIV/AIDS, and cerebrovascular disease. African American women are infected with HIV at a much higher rate than any other race of women and African American men delay seeking medical treatment. Such delays increase the likelihood that disease will only be detected in the more aggressive, later stages. Easley et al. also discuss inequities primarily affecting children and elderly.
The contributors, all well known in the public health arena, include in addition to Carol Easley Allen, Collins O. Airhihenbuwa, Byllye Y. Avery, Carl C. Bell, Lenora E. Johnson, James L. Kyle II, and David Satcher. The chapters consist of interviews with the contributors, each of whom gives his/her own views of the health care gauntlet that racial and ethnic minority group members in the U.S. must run.
The book serves as a readable exposé of the impact of health disparities based on each contributor's own experiences and observations. These insights often come from narratives about everyday living. The interview...
