One More River to Cross—Looking Back, Moving Forward: BLACK CHURCH & BLACK PRESS

Lastly, we will focus this year on strengthening our health disparity collaborations with two cultural giants in our community: the Black Church and the Black Press.

Historically, the Black Church has been our bridge over troubled waters and a rest stop along the Underground Railroad. Today, we know that countless African-American churches across the country shoulder the burden of health disparity through their ministries to the sick and through church-based health promotion programs. This summer, I will be reaching out to religious leaders to explore ways that we can step up our mutual efforts.

The NMA is poised to provide technical assistance through its national office to help the faith-based community bring their health promotion efforts to new heights. This year, we will be working more closely with the New York-based Balm in Gilead, a faith-based organization battling the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the African-American community and throughout the African Diaspora.
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In 1989, the Balm in Gilead began working with 50 churches. Today, it is working with 10,000 churches in its crusade for HIV/AIDS education and prevention. This remarkable achievement symbolizes the untapped possibilities of fortifying a relationship with the Black Church that focuses on addressing a range of key health disparity issues, including health literacy and disease prevention.

I am to announce that we will also be sitting down with the leadership of the Black Press to explore new ways to strengthen health reporting and to develop newspaper-based health literacy campaigns in the African-American community.

The Black Press nobly dates back to the Freedom s Journal, the nation’s first black-owned newspaper established in 1827 in New York City, the largest slave-trading center outside of Charleston. Today, the Black Press comprises over 200 newspapers and 15 million readers.

It is exciting to know that the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), the industry guild of the Black Press, recently announced at its convention in Chicago that it is launching a major collaboration with the nation’s black churches.

I believe the time is right to fortify the relationship among the NMA, the Black Press, the Black Church and other community-based institutions to strengthen the platform of our national health disparity efforts. buy viagra professional

CLOSURE

And so as the NMA moves through the early years of this new era of 21st-century medicine, I commit myself, as the 106th president, to advancing our “equality agenda”, to bolstering membership and mentorship, to fighting for universal health insurance coverage, to launching key initiatives in kidney care and transplantation, and to working across historic community institutions to close the circle around our nation’s health disparity efforts.

I also pledge to continue the valuable work done by Dr. Winston Price, to advance the five-year programmatic plan for increasing NMA grants, contracts and awards; for moving forward our research and policy development efforts in diversity and cultural competence; and for pushing ahead our work in education and training.

I will also continue to strengthen our valued partnerships with the American Medical Association, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Auxiliary to the NMA, our African-based medical associations, our corporate partners and the many other organizations that share the common cause.
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It is, perhaps, an ambitious agenda. But I believe we are armored with a spirit that cannot be crushed, and guided by a tradition of struggle and excellence that will not relent.

Looking back, one last time, we are emboldened by a rich legacy:

It is the legacy of James Derham, a former slave who established himself as the first African-American physician during the post-Colonial period.

It is the legacy of Dr. W. Montague Cobb, who, during his 41 years as a teacher, historian and physician, fought for racial integration of American hospitals and medical schools and advocated national healthcare coverage before Congress.

It is the legacy of Edith Irby Jones, Jocelyn Elders, Louis Sullivan, David Satcher, Mae Jamison, Vivian Pinn and so many others who taught us the fundamental lesson that excellence is mandatory and inequality is unacceptable.

And so let the word go forth across the nation’s healthcare system, across the policy sector, and across the media and community grapevines that the torch passes to yet another generation of African-American health leaders, born during Jim Crow, seasoned by hardship, disciplined by academic excellence, standing on the shoulders of ancestors and guided by the power of Almighty God to carry on the fight for equality. Save on your pharmacy bills. Buy norvasc amlodipine online

This is our challenge. This is our special charge: We have one more river to cross!

Category: Health