We have to do more then try...

Can we ever get a break?

Yet even when you work hard toward breaking cycles you can still walk into medical facility and w/o saying a word, you automatically become a stat. And medical professionals do not hear you.

One becomes a stat at what price? And we do have to be conscious of where these studies are done and whose doing them. I do believe there is so much more invdividually we could be doing to help ourselves as people, however I do not live in the South. In fact, 75% of my life has not been in the South. Yet when I walk into see a health care practioner first thing they start doing is quoting statistics and do not see me.

www.blackamericaweb.com

High Cost of Living Unhealthy More Than in Just Dollars
Date: Tuesday, April 07, 2009, 2:14 pm By: Zack Burgess, Special to BlackAmericaWeb.com

It’s strange when you think about it. There are over 44 million people in the United States of America without healthcare - a nation so rich, so powerful, so full of expectations - yet so full flaws; just a microcosm of the human spirit. Unfortunately, there are enormous amounts of people who have no idea how they are going to pay a medical bill if they have to take that proverbial trip to the doctor or emergency room. Face it, life can not be pretty for the under or uninsured.

The fallout gets worse because there is a segment of society that continues to lead in most categories when it comes to poor health – it happens to be African-Americans.“When you talk about cost, black folks put an enormous amount of stress on the system,” said Dr. Roderick Brown, 39, of Philadelphia. “The bad health habits are drawing dollars away from what should and could go towards prevention. I don’t think people understand that it cost a couple hundred dollars a minute just to be in the operating room.”

“I see it everyday, and it’s sad that I have to see it with my people," said Brown. "Whether it’s dealing with the 34-year-old grandmother, who happens to be 300-pounds, who does not want to do the necessary things just to get herself healthy, or the person who has not done the necessary things to treat their diabetes - then you find yourself having explain to them why you have to amputate their leg. It gets to be overwhelming. After a while, you become numb."

More than 886,000 deaths could have been prevented from 1991 to 2000 if African-Americans had received the same care as whites, according to an analysis in the American Journal of Public Health.

The study estimates that technological improvements in medicine - including better drugs, devices and procedures – averted only 176,633 deaths during the same period.That means "five times as many lives can be saved by correcting the disparities [in care between whites and blacks] than in developing new treatments," Steven H. Woolf, lead author and director of research at Virginia Commonwealth University's Department of Family Medicine, said in a telephone interview with The Washington Post.

The American Cancer Society recently came out with statistics on cancer prevalence and death rates. And while the news might appear positive overall, reflecting advances in cancer treatments and screening technology, the United States continues to deliver the best care to wealthier, white citizens. According to the data, African-American men have a 19 percent higher incidence rate and 37 percent higher death rate from all cancers combined than white men. African-American women have a six percent lower incidence rate, but a 17 percent higher death rate than white women for all cancers combined. It is not just cancer.

African-American men and women are twice as likely as whites to die of cerebrovascular disease or experience stroke, according to the National Institutes of Health. The rate of AIDS cases among African-Americans is 10 times higher than for whites, according to the department of Health and Human Services.African-Americans awaiting lung transplants are more likely to die or be denied than whites. African-Americans lag in almost every category. High blood pressure, heart failure, obesity and diabetes are just a few of the major problems that persist in the Black community.

And if you’re African-American and living in the South, your health prospects are worse.

In a study presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference in 2005, researchers reported that African-Americans living in the South were at the greatest disadvantage for combating stroke."When it comes to your risk of stroke, you get a penalty for being African-American, you get a penalty for living in the South, and you get an 'extra' penalty for being an African-American living in the South," George Howard, professor and chair of the biostatistics department at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, told the conference.Howard’s team compared the stroke rates among the so-called "stroke belt" states including Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida and Virginia, with non-southern states with large black populations including California, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Maybe help is on the way.

With President Barack Obama’s stimulus package, billions will be poured into healthcare, propping up Medicaid, the government health insurance plan for the poor, and pushing doctors and hospitals to move from paper to computers.At least $100 billion is slated to go to health care proposals that widen the safety net for the unemployed and back up the idea that improving a fractured U.S. health care system.

But Dr. Brown says the onus is on us."I know a lot of it has to do with economics; you can not compare the single mother who has to raise two or three kids in the inner city to the soccer mom of the suburbs," he said, "but I know with discipline, we should and could do better. I go to a church laden with very successful black people, and I don’t see many of them going to gym either. They have some of the same problems. Black people age well, but with all of the problems we bring on ourselves with bad diet, smoking and whatever else we do, it negates whatever good genes we have been blessed with. We have to do better.”

O yes we can!