Barbershop Quartet (health outreach program)

Last updated

The Barber Shop Quartet in New York City's Harlem neighborhood was founded in 2007 as an outreach program of the Men's Ministry at Abyssinian Baptist Church. The Barber Shop Quartet provides free men's health screenings for hypertension, diabetes, prostate cancer and colon cancer. [1]

Contents

Abyssinian Baptist Church, Harlem's largest church with more than 4,000 congregants, initially partnered with Harlem Hospital Center and St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital and received additional funding from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to implement this program. Other initiating partners include the Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Care and Prevention and Mount Sinai Hospital.

The Barber Shop Quartet works with local hospitals to provide doctors, nurses, and other volunteers to free health education and screenings for African American men for diabetes, hypertension, and prostate and colon cancers. Mobile medical units parked at participating barbershops throughout Harlem were the catalyst for the program's name. [2] The Barber Shop Quartet also grants free follow-up care to those whose screenings have detected a health issue. [3]

Streamlined in 2008, current partners of The Barber Shop Quartet include St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital, [3] New York University School of Medicine/Center for Healthful Behavior Change, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, Division of Community Collaboration and Implementation Science, and the Albert Einstein Cancer Center, Cancer Prevention & Control Research Program.

History

In 2007, Dr. Bert Petersen, Jr., a cancer surgeon and member of Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church, recognized that African-American men living in urban areas undergo disproportionate suffering from chronic diseases. When paired with the reduced likelihood of receiving proper care and treatment for those conditions, mortality was high. Dr. Petersen approached church leaders to assist him in creating a program to address these health disparities. Having previously conducted breast cancer education efforts in beauty parlors, [4] Dr. Petersen launched a similar program for men, recognizing that on site screening in the friendly neighborhood setting of the barber shop would help to eliminate key barriers to accessing services. [5]

Related Research Articles

Barber Person who cuts, dress, groom, style and shaves males hair

A barber is a person whose occupation is mainly to cut, dress, groom, style and shave men's and boys' hair or beards. A barber's place of work is known as a "barbershop" or a "barber's". Barbershops are also places of social interaction and public discourse. In some instances, barbershops are also public fora. They are the locations of open debates, voicing public concerns, and engaging citizens in discussions about contemporary issues.

Preventive healthcare Prevent and minimize the occurrence of diseases

Preventive healthcare, or prophylaxis, consists of measures taken for the purposes of disease prevention. Disease and disability are affected by environmental factors, genetic predisposition, disease agents, and lifestyle choices, and are dynamic processes which begin before individuals realize they are affected. Disease prevention relies on anticipatory actions that can be categorized as primal, primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention.

Abyssinian Baptist Church Church in Harlem, New York, New York, United States

The Abyssinian Baptist Church is a Baptist megachurch located at 132 West 138th Street between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and Lenox Avenue in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, affiliated with the National Baptist Convention, USA.

North York General Hospital Hospital in Ontario, Canada

North York General Hospital (NYGH) is a teaching hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Primarily serving the North York district, as well as southern York Region, it offers acute care, ambulatory and long-term services at multiple sites. It is one of Canada's leading community academic hospitals and is affiliated with the University of Toronto. NYGH is one of the three constituent hospitals of the Peters-Boyd Academy of the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine.

Henry Ford Hospital Hospital in Michigan, United States

Henry Ford Hospital (HFH) is an 877-bed tertiary care hospital, education and research complex at the western edge of the New Center area in Detroit, Michigan. The flagship facility for the Henry Ford Health System, it was one of the first hospitals in the United States to use a standard fee schedule and favor private or semi-private rooms over large wards. It was the first hospital in the country to form a closed, salaried medical staff. As founder Henry Ford viewed tobacco as being unhealthy, the hospital was one of the first in the United States to institute a total ban on smoking. Henry Ford Hospital is staffed by the Henry Ford Medical Group, one of the nation's largest and oldest group practices with 1,200 physicians in more than 40 specialties.

Montefiore Medical Center Hospital in New York, United States

Montefiore Medical Center is a premier academic medical center and the primary teaching hospital of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York City. Its main campus, the Henry and Lucy Moses Division, is located in the Norwood section of the northern Bronx. It is named for Moses Montefiore and is one of the 50 largest employers in New York. In 2020, Montefiore was ranked No. 6 New York City metropolitan area hospitals by U.S. News & World Report. Adjacent to the main hospital is the Children's Hospital at Montefiore, which serves infants, children, teens, and young adults aged 0–21.

Screening (medicine) Brief medical evaluation to detect unnoticed health problems

Screening, in medicine, is a strategy used to look for as-yet-unrecognised conditions or risk markers. This testing can be applied to individuals or to a whole population. The people tested may not exhibit any signs or symptoms of a disease, or they might exhibit only one or two symptoms, which by themselves do not indicate a definitive diagnosis.

Yuma Regional Medical Center Hospital in Yuma, Arizona

Yuma Regional Medical Center (YRMC) is a hospital in Yuma, Arizona. It began in 1958 under the name Parkview Hospital.

International Men's Health Week (IMHW) is an international week celebrated in several countries the week preceding and including Father's Day to focus on issues facing men's health. International Men's Health Week began at an international level in 2002 when representatives from six men's health organizations around the world met in a meeting organized by Men's Health Network at the 2nd World Congress on Men's Health in Vienna, Austria, and resolved to work together to launch IMHW. This meeting followed preliminary discussions in 2001, at the first World Congress on Men's Health, about the need to coordinate awareness periods around the globe.

National Prostate Health Month

National Prostate Health Month (NPHM), also known as National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, is observed every September in North America by health experts, health advocates, and individuals concerned with men's prostate health and prostate cancer. Designating a month for the issue serves the purpose of:

Adventist Health Studies

Adventist Health Studies (AHS) is a series of long-term medical research projects of Loma Linda University with the intent to measure the link between lifestyle, diet, disease and mortality of Seventh-day Adventists.

Ashutosh Tewari American urologist, oncologist

Ashutosh K. Tewari is the chairman of urology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. He is a board certified American urologist, oncologist, and principal investigator. Before moving to the Icahn School of Medicine in 2013, he was the founding director of both the Center for Prostate Cancer at Weill Cornell Medical College and the LeFrak Center for Robotic Surgery at NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Tewari was the Ronald P. Lynch endowed Chair of Urologic Oncology and the hospital's Director of Robotic Prostatectomy, treating patients with prostate, urinary bladder and other urological cancers. He is the current President of the Society for Urologic Robotic Surgeons (SURS) and the Committee Chair of the Prostate Program. Dr. Tewari is a world leading urological surgeon, and has performed over 9,000 robotically assisted procedures using the da Vinci Surgical System. Academically, he is recognized as a world-renowned expert on urologic oncology with over 250 peer reviewed published papers to his credit; he is on such lists as America's Top Doctors, New York Magazine's Best Doctors, and Who's Who in the World. In 2012, he was given the American Urological Association Gold Cystoscope Award for "outstanding contributions to the field of urologic oncology, most notably the treatment of prostate cancer and the development of novel techniques to improve the outcomes of robotic prostatectomy."

Saint Thomas - Rutherford Hospital Hospital in Tennessee, United States

Saint Thomas Rutherford Hospital, formerly Middle Tennessee Medical Center, is a 286-bed private, not-for-profit hospital located in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, United States. Saint Thomas Rutherford Hospital is a member of Saint Thomas Health.

Saint Thomas - Midtown Hospital (Nashville) Hospital in Tennessee, United States

Saint Thomas Midtown Hospital, formerly known as Baptist Hospital, is a non-profit community hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, United States and the largest such hospital in Middle Tennessee. It is licensed for 683 acute and rehab care beds.

Your Disease Risk is a publicly available health risk assessment tool on the Internet. Launched in early 2000 and continually updated, the site offers risk assessments for twelve different cancers and four other important chronic diseases: heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and osteoporosis.

Second Opinion, an American television series, is the only regularly scheduled health series on public television. Each week, series host engages a panel of medical professionals and patients in honest, in-depth discussions about life-changing medical decisions. Using intriguing, real-life medical cases, the specialists grapple with diagnosis and treatment options to give viewers the most up-to-date, accurate medical information. The series is produced for public television by WXXI-TV, the University of Rochester Medical Center and West 175 Productions. Second Opinion is made possible with support from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

Cancer screening Method to detect cancer

Cancer screening aims to detect cancer before symptoms appear. This may involve blood tests, urine tests, DNA tests, other tests, or medical imaging. The benefits of screening in terms of cancer prevention, early detection and subsequent treatment must be weighed against any harms.

The New Freedmen's Clinic is a free student-run health care clinic affiliated with Howard University Hospital (HUH) and Howard University College of Medicine (HUCM). It gets its name from HUH's original name - Freedmen's Hospital. It is currently located in the heart of Washington, DC, within HUH.

Sundaram Medical Foundation is a community-centred, non-profit, trust hospital founded in 1994 by S. Rangarajan. Sundaram Medical Foundation offers multi-specialty medical care, including 24-hour ambulance service and emergency room facilities, and specialities such as general medicine, general surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, ENT, ophthalmology, dermatology, dentistry, family medicine, orthopedics and psychiatry.

Barbara Barlow is an American pediatric surgeon who was the first woman to train in pediatric surgery at Babies Hospital, present-day Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital. She has also reduced the amount of injuries for inner-city children through her research and efforts to educate the public on prevention of accidents.

References

  1. "Church-Sponsored, Barbershop-Based Program Enhances Access to Screenings and Followup Care for African-American Men in Harlem". Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. June 15, 2011 [July 20, 2009]. Archived from the original on 2017-02-01. Retrieved December 26, 2011.
  2. "A Racial Divide". Newsweek . April 10, 2009. Retrieved December 26, 2011.
  3. 1 2 "Cancer Found in Several Men" (PDF).[ dead link ]
  4. O'Shaughnessy, Patrice (September 28, 2010). "Dr. Bert Petersen focuses on breast health after mammograms and cancer diagnoses". New York Daily News. Retrieved December 26, 2011.
  5. Probasco, Mat (December 22, 2008). "V.I. Cancer Surgeon Taking Free Health Care to the Streets of Harlem". St. Thomas Source. Retrieved December 26, 2011.