To wrap up National Minority Health Month, NCLR is proudly hosting a blog carnival with our friends and partners to celebrate recent progress toward eliminating health disparities for underserved communities—and talk frankly about the challenges that remain. Today, bloggers answer the question: What is your organization or community doing to advance a health equity mission?
By Delane Sims, Founder/Chair, Senior Moments
Senior Moments, objective is to help connect elders, who are homebound and disabled, to resources to promote health and independence. Senior Moments has found that a large number of elders who are home alone, without family or community support, are of African American decent. Many African American elders in the San Francisco Bay Area face huge health disparities. However, our research has revealed that African American elders face these disparities nationally. It is important to consider the source of these disparities. Until the source is exposed, the symptoms will persist. According to a study by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) African Americans tend to have higher rates of chronic diseases, functional impairment, and indicators of risk such as hypertension. Racial oppression, discrimination, and institutional racism have been identified as potential explanations for poorer health and increased risk of stress-related disease.
In the United States, millions of African American elders are dying due to obstacles to fairness and equal access. While representing only 12% of the population in New Orleans, 58% of elderly Black people lost their lives during hurricane Katrina. These facts represent only a fraction of the thousands of needless deaths suffered by Black seniors daily across America. Low-income African American elders are the most undeserved and vulnerable groups in our society. This conundrum is not just a problem in the Black community - it is a human rights issue. If America does not come face to face with the disenfranchisement, disparities and inequalities that affect our nation’s African American elders, we will all pay a price that will be brutally painful and completely unaffordable.