Greetings!
Just about a month ago we launched without fanfare — Health Wednesday — as a way to focus attention on one of the most vital aspects of life. And I'm pleased to say it's working, and not just because yesterday marked my first wellness check up in the more than two years since COVID joined our daily lexicon. My super excellent primary care physician listened to my mild head-to-toe tales of woe and made two specialist referrals. Before most of you will have read this I will have joined the ranks of virtual medicine as a patient, with an early morning consult that eliminates both a six-week wait and a two-hour commute. Consider me a fan.
Health Wednesday is having other consequences as well. It's become difficult not to use a health lens when examining other areas of life: relationships, the state of our union, our personal finances. I'm reminded that long ago I was director of an agency with a venerable history that made it easy for its then caretakers to live in the past. I wasn't there long, but while I was there I came to see my mission as a change agent, to be a new broom that swept out the cobwebs and detritus that festered in all the dark corners of the place. One of my advisors talked about the work from a health vantage: sunlight being a disinfectant and good health driving out bad.
April is Minority Health Month, and several of our recent stories reflect on that theme. Next week marks the return of Minority Men's Health Fair, an important and valuable community event started almost 20 years by Dr. Charles Modlin. It returns this year after being shelved by COVID the past two Aprils. It now has new sponsors and three new locations. Read all about it here, and as we like to say, get your favorite procrastinating black man over there. The fair welcomes all men, so if your favorite happens to be vanilla or chartreuse, he will also be welcomed.
This Saturday, the Greater Cleveland Association of Black Journalists will interrogate a diverse panel of professionals, including at least one public official, on what it means to declare racism a public health crisis, and what Cleveland and the County have done since making that stirring declaration. Read about it here.
Did you know that beginning July 16, the nation will have a new mental health service? Get the 411 on the new 988 hotline here.
Returning to our health lens as a way of measuring systems, has anyone come up with a measure for what constitutes unhealthy profits? We ask in the wake of this report on how private equity ownership of nursing homes is raising questions on Capitol Hill. It's especially poignant in the wake of last month's announcement that Eliza Bryant Village, the country’s oldest continually operating African American-founded long-term care facility, will shut down its 99-bed skilled nursing facility on June 8.
But let's close this newsletter with a cause for celebration. The Journal of the American Medical Association has just hired its first person of color and second woman as its new editor-in-chief. Read about the remarkable Doctor Doctor Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo here.
Be well.
As always, stay safe and thanks for reading The Real Deal Press!
R. T. Andrews
Note, if you work in the health space, and have an announcement you'd like us to include for Health Wednesday, our weekly deadline is the preceding Friday at 5p.
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