Racial Reconciliation - Race and Health
- Feb 6, 2006 - comment
African American men, on average, die much younger than they should from diseases that should not be so deadly. Death rates for African American men are higher than for whites in all age groups below the age of 84. But the peak is between the ages of 45 and 64. It is during those years that diseases afflict many Americans. But it is the African American community where the effects are felt harder and sooner than among other groups. Dr. Claude A. Allen, deputy secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, says, “When you look at what is killing African American men, it is diseases that are preventable or treatable with great survivability.”
So why do African American men tend to live an average of seven years less than white men? Experts believe the answers are a tangle of medical, racial, and economic factors. Among them are:
- Distrust of the system and difficulties in communication. Many African American men believe that their doctor either looked down on them or treated them disrespectfully.
- Typical male reluctance to visit a doctor. Some men do not want to show “weakness” by going to a doctor—something that is sometimes intensified in African American men.
- “Pathological stoicism”—a term coined by Dr. Jean Bonhomme to explain why African American men will push themselves to “distorted extremes without asking for help in order to ‘be a man’.”
- Lack of treatment access or problems with the kind or level of treatment received.
The U.S Centers for Disease Control has begun an initiative called Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health 2010 to help improve the health care of African Americans. That program finances community coalitions with the goal of eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in health care. An encouraging note is found in the fact that many African American men are now deciding that they must take the responsibility to access good health care. One man in Atlanta said, “I want to know what’s going on so I can deal with it.”
“As Black Men Move Into Middle Age, Dangers Rise,” http://www.nytimes.com , September 23, 2002 [Access fee required]
“African Americans continue to suffer disproportionately from chronic and preventable disease compared with white Americans. Of the three leading causes of death in African Americans—heart disease, cancer, and stroke—smoking and other tobacco use are major contributors.
- Each year, approximately 45,000 African Americans die from a preventable smoking-related disease.
- If current trends continue, an estimated 1.6 million African Americans who are now under the age of 18 years will become regular smokers. About 500,000 of those smokers will die of a smoking-related disease.
- Smoking is responsible for 87 percent of lung cancers. African American men are at least 50 percent more likely to develop lung cancer than white men. African American men have a higher mortality rate of cancer of the lung and bronchus (100.8 per 100,000) than do white men (70.1 per 100,000).
- Stroke is associated with cerebrovascular disease and is a major cause of death in the United States. Smoking significantly elevates the risk of stroke. Cerebrovascular disease is twice as high among African American men (53.1 per 100,000) as among white men (26.3 per 100,000) and twice as high among African American women (40.6 per 100,000) as among white women (22.6 per 100,000).”
Adapted from African Americans and Tobacco (Centers for Disease Control) [Accessed October 3, 2005]
- Injuries are the leading cause of death for Native Americans ages 1 to 44 and the third leading cause of death overall (CDC 2003).
- Injuries and violence account for 75 percent of all deaths among Native Americans ages 1 to 19 (Wallace 2000).
- Native Americans 19 years and younger are at greater risk of preventable injury-related deaths than others in the same age group in the United States. Compared with blacks and whites, this group had the highest injury-related death rates for motor vehicle crashes, pedestrian events, and suicide. Rates for these causes were two to three times greater than rates for whites the same age. During 1989-1998, injuries and violence caused the deaths of 3,314 Native American children living in Indian Health Service (IHS) areas (Wallace 2003).
Injuries Among Native Americans: Fact Sheet (Centers for Disease Control) [Accessed October 3, 2005]
“Asian Americans represent both extremes of socioeconomic and health indices: while more than a million Asian Americans live at or below the federal poverty level, Asian-American women have the highest life expectancy of any other group. Asian Americans suffer disproportionately from certain types of cancer, tuberculosis, and Hepatitis B. Factors contributing to poor health outcomes for Asian Americans include language and cultural barriers, stigma associated with certain conditions, and lack of health insurance.”
The 10 leading causes of death in the U.S. in 2002 for Asian Americans or Pacific Islanders were:
- Cancer
- Heart disease
- Stroke
- Unintentional injury
- Diabetes
- Influenza and Pneumonia
- Chronic lower respiratory disease
- Suicide
- Nephrisits, Nephrotic syndrome, and Nephrosis
- Septicemia
Adapted from Asian American Populations (Centers for Disease Control) [Accessed October 3, 2005]
Further Learning
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