"Clipping Away At Illness"

[Joesocwork 4]

I found this story pretty uplifting.  Sometimes when it seems that society allows its problems to get the best of them it's encouraging to the see a grassroots/community-based solution working for people, especially when it comes to enable people to seek help for serious health problems.  I have fond memories of a Howard University professor whose barbershop was his social support system.    Now just as long as the barbers and beauticians don't become surgeons! 

Clipping Away at Illness

Barbers and Salons Catering to Blacks Add Health Checks to List of Services

By Delphine Schrank

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, November 16, 2007; Page B01

In the annals of beauty, the pompadour, the beehive and the Afro all had their day. Now comes the lifesaving haircut.

Around the corner, at the Divine Transformation Beauty Salon, beautician Arnica Ford cajoled a 300-plus-pound patron into trying a fiber-rich diet.

 

And in Northeast, Marquita Wise opened her rose-garlanded hair salon, Fresh Cut II All About You, on a Sunday night to check the blood pressure of a client who had nearly fainted after learning that her daughter had died in a car crash.

Brace, Ford and Wise are among African American barbers and beauticians in five D.C. shops with blood pressure machines and digital scales tucked between hair-drying bonnets and bottles of shampoo. They have been enlisted in a program underwritten by insurers CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield and the MedStar Research Institute to combat coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death among black Americans.

Modeled after a Baltimore program coordinated by the University of Maryland's Department of 

Medicine, the D.C. program trains stylists how to screen clients for obesity and high blood pressure and when to urge them to follow up with a doctor. The plan is to be implemented in 12 shops by year's end.

"Everyone wants to be beautiful, whether they go to a hairstylist or barber or whether they go to a doctor," Ford said. "Now we're working with inner beauty as well."

Launched last month, the Hair Heart and Health program joins a groundswell of similar efforts across the country. All expand on the unique cultural role that barbershops and hair salons play in the African American community to raise awareness about health issues, particularly those that disproportionately affect black Americans.

According to the

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

An intereting program.  I wish them every success with it.

[Meg 368]

You can get a flu shot and a blood pressure check at most grocery stores around here.  Why not add barber shops where people spend more time hanging out?   Go with what works.

[Joesocwork 4]

Thanks. One of the potential hazards of my profession in my opinion is to unwittingly come across as a missionary who tries to impose what they think what is right w/out respecting how to get a consensus from the culture they are they wanting to help.  Even though this is funded by a university, this still strikes me as program where people who are the most affected being allowed to solve their own problems, which I totally respect and admire.

[DOXXP29 5]

There are a few places here in D.C. that have been doing that for a long time. Recently it has caught on an a lot more are doing it. Competition, maybe? Whatever, it is a good idea.

In D.C. (and many other cities as well, though maybe not to the same degree), the barbershop is a place of refuge, service, information and a lot of other things. The barbershop has been called "a man's church", and there's a lot of truth to that here in D.C. It's not uncommon for barbers here to work with kids doing things like trying to keep them off of the streets or tutoring them for school or coaching sports. They routinely act as a place where one can donate a little something to contribute to a neighbour or friend who might be having a hard time. They definitely do more than cut hair. BTW, I'm talking about the local inner city barber shops in the working neighbourhoods, not the salons or shop in the suburbs or upper class areas. My hat is off to these guys who go the extra mile and provide a sense of community in some places where it is sorely needed.

EDIT:  Are you still around the D.C. area, Joesocwork? Funny you mention a Howard professor. The area around Howard, especially up along Georgia Avenue is a perfect example of these barbershops that provide the extra community services. Petworth and upper Columbia Heights have some that provide a haven for the old timers of the community who are up against the sweeping change of gentrification which can still be kinda rocky at times up there.