In Health Care, Prevention Matters

By: Hugh B. Price

President

National Urban League

I've made it my business to spend a great deal of time talking about the importance of black youth gaining a quality education; and the National Urban League has, now as down through the years, expended a great deal of effort in building all sorts of programs to make educational opportunity a reality for ever-expanding segments of Black America, especially its youth.

That effort is more important than ever now in the Information Age. A sorry destiny indeed awaits those who haven't learned and don't have the skills to keep learning. We say in innumerable ways that educational achievement matters.

But we're also fully aware that the quest for opportunity and equality will prove elusive if African Americans are beset by poor health. Children who are chronically sick struggle academically because they so often feel out of sorts or miss so much school altogether. Parents who are frequently ill themselves have trouble holding steady jobs and incur staggering medical expenses. If their youngsters are sickly, they miss work a lot and tempt their employers to replace them.

In general, African Americans are prone to certain chronic and infectious diseases that impair our productivity, increase our economic dependence and shorten our natural life spans. These include such ailments as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, certain cancers, and, all too sadly, HIV/AIDS.

Some of these crippling disparities are attributable to personal lifestyle choices, eating habits and adverse environmental factors; and changing them is drawing more and more attention from within and outside the black community.

That is all to the good, because, if when it comes to education, we rightly trumpet that "Achievement Matters,"then we need to make it equally clear that, when it comes to health care,"Prevention Matters"-and then make sure that more black Americans practice what we preach.

Research shows convincingly that healthier lifestyles, frequent exercise and timely physical checkups make a huge difference in warding off debilitating and dangerous diseases.

But in this arena, as in so many others, the burden is not ours alone to bear. The government tolerates a dysfunctional system of health care that treats minorities as second-class citizens.

Take the issue of access for starters. As recently as 1999, there were 43 million people without health insurance, including twenty-one percent of all African Americans.

Or, take quality. A recent study by the National Academies' Institute of Medicine found that blacks and other minorities receive lower quality health care than do whites.

And finally, take the issue of affordability. Working people who don't receive health coverage on the job seldom can afford it on their own. So they're forced to rely for basic care on overworked emergency rooms and under-funded public health clinics. That's one reason few urban hospitals are on sound economic footing these days. The ripples of this spread outward as insurance companies exit the business by jacking up fees and scaling back coverage, causing physicians to complain bitterly about faceless bureaucrats who aren't even doctors second-guessing their treatment decisions and squeezing their fees.

Because poor health impedes African Americans' journey to the economic and social mainstream, the National Urban League has decided to enter this arena with our accustomed mix of direct services, research, policy analysis and advocacy.

The first component of the National Urban League's drive to help persuade African Americans that"Prevention Matters"is a diabetes awareness initiative that we launched recently with generous support from the Centers for Disease Control.

As policy advocates, we intend to work with other groups to try to persuade health care providers that prevention-oriented procedures should be enthusiastically encouraged – and readily reimbursable.

And we intend to use our reach into black communities to convince more African Americans to take better care of themselves, and to show them how they can, affordably, take better care of themselves.

But America's health care system is in shambles and it cannot be fixed a solely by those of us outside of government. The health-care-related problems of poor people, working people and people of color cannot be solved or significantly reduced by health care providers and private insurers on their own. The federal government must bring order and fairness to the system by figuring out how to provide quality health care that is affordable and accessible to all.

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