Health disparity intervention through minority collegiate service learning.

In Tennessee, African Americans suffer significantly from infant morbidity, sexually transmitted diseases, and deaths from vascular disease and cancer. The Meharry Medical College Wellness Project addresses these health disparities with a service learning curriculum focused on community-based research. Trained minority undergraduates have conducted 355 Institutional Review Board-approved community intervention projects statewide.

Disparities in smoking: data from the Nashville REACH 2010 project.

The Nashville REACH 2010 project is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to reduce health disparities in diabetes and heart disease among African Americans in Nashville, Tenn. While Tennessee has the third highest smoking rate (26.1%) in the United States, there are few appropriate local data useful for planning and evaluating local antismoking interventions. Data gathered for Nashville REACH 2010 from 4 large random telephone surveys were pooled to produce a database (n = 15,076) to define the extent of the local smoking disparity and the subgroups with the highest and lowest prevalence of smoking. African American women were least likely to smoke (21.3%) followed by white women (24.9%), and then African American and white men (27.3% and 27.9%, respectively). Among African American subgroups, smoking was lowest in students (10.8%) and retirees (17.1%) and highest in unemployed men (45.9%). In a logistic regression, smoking was highest among single men, the lowest educational level, the unemployed, the lowest income groups, and those between 40 and 50 years of age.

REACH-Meharry community-campus partnership: developing culturally competent health care providers.

An important national health care effort is elimination of racial and ethnic disparities in six specific conditions: infant mortality, cancer screening and management, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, human immunodeficiency virus infection, and child and adult immunizations. To address this concern, several health entities in Nashville, Tennessee responded to a grant initiative from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop a Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) demonstration project. The resulting award is the Nashville REACH 2010 Project, charged to develop sustainable methods to reduce and, in time, eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in cardiovascular disease and diabetes in the North Nashville community, where mortality rates of these diseases are substantially higher than in other parts of the county. As one of its many interests, the project included potential health care providers to receive and disseminate messages about disease prevention and health education. The present paper describes the community-campus partnership between the Nashville REACH 2010 project and the post-baccalaureate program of Meharry Medical College, a partnership that enfolded Meharry's pre-professional health care students into the community-based participatory service research project to increase the awareness and sensitivity of future minority health care providers to issues in minority and poor, underserved populations and to increase potential providers' familiarity with the processes involved in community-based participatory research.

An evaluation of the Nashville REACH 2010 community health screening strategy.

Community-based screening is 1 of 4 strategies selected by the Nashville REACH 2010 project for reducing disparities in heart disease and diabetes among African Americans in North Nashville, Tenn. We evaluated our screening efforts by asking 4 questions: (1) Are the screening participants representative of the target population? (2) How often were screening participants with possible undiagnosed hypertension, high cholesterol, and diabetes identified? (3) How often were screening participants with an elevated risk for developing hypertension, high cholesterol, and diabetes identified? and (4) How often did we identify screening participants with known hypertension, high cholesterol, and diabetes whose disease management was suboptimal? Results from 1757 persons screened were compared to telephone surveys from 16,199 Nashville residents. Those screened were younger and healthier than the target population. Rates of potentially undiagnosed cases among African Americans were 0.8% for diabetes, 17.4% for hypertension, and 32.7% for high cholesterol. High-risk individuals were identified 13.1% of the time for diabetes, 45.3% of the time for hypertension, and 21.3% of the time for total cholesterol. Rates of poorly controlled known disease were 23.5% for diabetes, 39.0% for hypertension, and 58.2% for total cholesterol. Although we reached a younger and healthier group than the community population, community-based screenings identified many people with potential health risks. We present a model of how to organize and implement successful community-based screening.

Overview of Nashville REACH 2010's approach to eliminating disparities in diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH 2010) is a federally sponsored initiative with the goal of reducing and eliminating disparities in health by 2010. The approach is community-driven, wherein community coalitions design, implement, and evaluate the strategies to eliminate health disparities. This article describes the history, development, and activities of Nashville, Tenn, REACH 2010's initiative that targets the reduction of cardiovascular disease and diabetes in African Americans. The team-based strategies, generated with considerable community input, focused on effecting changes in access to healthcare, health and wellness, screening, and tobacco use with the goal of making sustainable behavioral and environmental changes. Evaluation includes a Web-based system for collecting process data and random telephone surveys to monitor the program's impact on health disparities.

Diabetes management among low-income African Americans: a description of a pilot strategy for empowerment.

Incidence of type II diabetes is increasing in the United States and is most prevalent among low-income African Americans. Community health initiatives supported by partnerships of community leaders and health professionals can contribute to the elimination of inequalities in health status. The focus of Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) 2010, an initiative sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is to facilitate the initiation of community-wide changes as well as increase individual empowerment to reduce disparities in diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. A pilot program developed by REACH health educators and community health partners to improve disease self-management among low-income African American diabetic patients was implemented at a community health center in Nashville, Tenn. The program's major components included health education, individual counseling, screenings, and outreach. The program shows promise of improving patient care and outcomes.

Using focus groups to understand health-related practices and perceptions of African Americans: Nashville REACH 2010 preliminary findings.

To gain an understanding of health-related practices and perceptions, Nashville REACH 2010 conducted focus studies among 5 community groups. Attitudes about health, personal risk behaviors, quality of health care, and models of personal behavior change were assessed. All focus-group sessions were transcribed and analyzed using a consensus panel methodology. A combined analysis of the focus groups revealed 3 categories of barriers to healthier living: 1) personal, 2) environmental, and 3) systemic. Personal barriers included lack of adequate finances, physical limitations, lack of knowledge, and stress. Environmental barriers were related to the unavailability of healthy food choices and adequate places to exercise in the community. The accessibility and quality of health care were the most pervasive systemic barriers identified. Though these findings are not novel to urban African-American communities, they will serve as the framework by which Nashville REACH 2010 will implement strategies to reduce and, ultimately, eliminate cardiovascular disease and diabetes disparities.