8172: Haircuts And Healthcare.

From USA TODAY…

Barbershops can help lower blood pressure, study finds

By Steve Sternberg, USA TODAY

CHICAGO — Just as barbers doubled as doctors in days gone by, barbers and stylists in certain barbershops and salons have begun dispensing medical information with haircuts.

In some shops in certain low-income wards in Washington, D.C., you can even get your blood pressure checked.

Such hair cutteries, social centers in the heart of African-American communities, now lie at the heart of a program designed to bring down blood pressure among young black males.

“We asked them to take blood pressure, height and weight and asked them to serve as a (heart information) resource for the neighborood,” says Angela Silverman of MedStar Health Research Institute, Hyattsville, Md.

A study involving more than 800 men and women in urban Washington, D.C., showed that a blood-pressure screening and health education program run by barbers and stylists at 16 hair shopshelped to lower high blood pressure among their patrons, she said at a meeting of the American Heart Association here.

Ninety-five of those people came back for follow-up screening. Thirty-six of them had high blood pressure at the start of the study; 18 managed to bring it down, with the help of dietary advice, informational videos — even instruction in “chair dancing,” Silverman says.

High blood pressure is widespread among black males, affecting more than 40% of them, compared with about a third of white males, according to AHA statistics. Silverman says the idea has gained so much support that the Washington, D.C., Department of Health will expand the program beyond blood pressure to high cholesterol and diabetes.

“I think it’s an excellent idea,” says Robert Bonow, a cardiologist at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “Let’s go where the people are.”