Essay 3072

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

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Community approach helps promote healthy choices
Research project on deadly breast cancer among black women reaps understanding

BY SARAH GEHLERT

One of the biggest health-care problems confronting this country is the disparity in health between racial groups. The diseases blacks and whites suffer as well as their responses to the same disease are often different. In many cases, researchers are unable to study those differences completely because distrust limits people’s interest in becoming involved in important medical research such as clinical trials.

We have found, however, that involving the members of the community as partners in research can make a big difference in overcoming this gap.

In the spring of 2003, we appealed to black men and women in the South Side Chicago community to be part of a series of focus groups for a research project at the University of Chicago aimed at better understanding why black women develop breast cancer earlier than white women, and why this disease is so much more fatal to black women. Nearly 1,400 South Side residents responded to that call and their insights have guided our research at the University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Health Disparities Research.

We want to thank those who participated in the focus groups. By going out in the community and learning the challenges people face, we have gained important perspectives from the people whose health we are trying to improve.

We wanted to know more about what conditions in neighborhoods “get under the skin” of African-American women to produce the factors that prompt genes to change in a way that brings on deadly breast cancer for black women. We heard many stories as we sat with men and women in church halls and community centers throughout the South Side.

We learned more about what goes on in neighborhoods that affects health in a good or bad way. We learned about neighborhood associations and organizations that protect health. We heard about the vacant buildings in their neighborhood where troublemakers lurk. We learned about the problems black men and women have dealing with the health-care system. And over and over again, we learned how racial discrimination is an unwelcome companion to black women’s everyday lives.

We heard about the people’s love for their children, and their concern that the youth in their community aren’t getting the right information, particularly at school, about ways to lead a healthy life. Instead of learning about their bodies and ways of staying fit, the students are learning about health by listening to lists of risky behaviors that they should avoid.

In all, we talked with more than 500 men and women in 49 small group gatherings. We invited them to a daylong South Side Breast Cancer Summit, which was held at the Metropolitan Apostolic Community Church in April 2005. We worked together to create an action plan, which we are now implementing.

One of our first goals from that conference has been accomplished: a DVD “Livin’ in Your Body 4 Life” on teen health that is now being shown in schools and churches and on cable television. Again, working with the community paid off. High school students helped us in the formatting of the project, in choosing the music and in deciding on ways in which the information was presented. The resulting program far exceeded anything we could have produced on our own.

But there is still much more to be done. The courageous black women and men who joined us as our partners in the fight against deadly breast cancer have shown us the way. We need to agitate at City Hall to get the abandoned buildings in neighborhoods torn down, we need to speak out against the causes of violence and support people in the community who are trying to end it, we need to insist on more safe spaces for people to gather and children to play. We must stay vigilant against the continued menace of racism. Together we can make changes.

[Sarah Gehlert is a professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago and director of the University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Health Disparities Research]