The barbershop has always been more than a place to get a trim and a shave for African American men. It’s a place to talk sports, debate politics, and swap stories. Now it may also be a site for early medical intervention for high blood pressure.
Dr. Ronald Victor, the director of Cedars-Sinai Center for Hypertension in Los Angeles, recently received an $8.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to test if early barbershop intervention can produce significantly better blood pressure control in African American men.
High blood pressure disproportionately affects African Americans, who develop it at younger ages than other groups in the U.S. and are more likely to develop related complications such as stroke and heart disease. African American men, in particular, suffer from a low rate of preventative care, and have a death rate from hypertension more than two times higher than that of their white counterparts.
The program will train barbers in traditionally African American communities to take their customers’ blood pressure and refer customers with elevated readings to doctors. “We have to leave the hallowed halls of medicine,” Victor explains. “Barbershops are the hub of a community.”
[For more of this story, written by Marissa Gluck, go to http://www.citylab.com/work/20...ressure-test/379454/]
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