April 2019 Edition

Columbus & Dayton

April 2019

7

Time to Spring Clean Your Health

12 15

By Lisa Benton, MPH, MD

32nd Annual Minority Health Month Kick-Off

By Angela Dawson, Executive Director

Food Waste is a Major Problem

By Elaine Povich

FREE

A Cure for Sickle Cell Anemia?

EVENT

SERIES

PUBLISHER’S PAGE Founder & Publisher Ray Miller

Layout & Design Ray Miller, III

Assistant Editor Ray Miller, III

Media Consultant Rod Harris Distribution Manager Ronald Burke Student Interns Jada Respress Olivia Deslandes

Lead Photographer Steve Harrison

Contributing Writers Edward Bell, MBA Lisa Benton, MD, MPH Rodney Q. Blount, Jr., MA Benette DeCoux, M.Ed Billi Ewing Elise Jackson Eric Johnson, PhD Robin A. Jones, PhD Cecil Jones, MBA Becky Little Darren Lundy, MBA Jaqueline Lewis-Lyons, Psy.D William McCoy, MPA Marty Miller Ray Miller, III Elain S. Povich Manju Sankarappa Sen. Charleta B. Tavares (Ret.) Yimy Villa Ayan Warfa

The Columbus African American news journal was founded by Ray Miller on January 10, 2011

The Columbus & Dayton African American 503 S. High Street - Suite 102 Columbus, Ohio 43215 Office: 614.826.2254

The beautifully written obituary in the Celebration of Life obsequy presented Dr. Booth’s passing this way--The Reverend Dr. Charles Edward Booth, a prophetic preacher, scholar, author, and mentor to many, quietly transitioned into his Heavenly Father’s arms on Saturday, March 23, 2019, at his home in Pickerington, OH. Dr. Booth was born in Baltimore, Maryland on February 4, 1947, to Hazel Willis Booth and William W. Booth. After graduating from Baltimore City College High School in Baltimore, Maryland, he went on to earn his Bachelor of Arts degree from Howard University, followed by his Master of Divinity degree from Eastern Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dr. Booth earned a Doctor of Ministry degree from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, an institution where he eventually went on to serve as a member of the Board of Trustees from 2011 until the time of his death. He served as pastor of St. Paul’s Baptist Church in West Chester, Pennsylvania from 1970-1977, and became pastor of Mt. Olivet Baptist Church in Columbus, Ohio on January 1, 1978.

My first reaction upon hearing of Dr. Booth’s passing was, what a tremendous loss to our community, here in Columbus and throughout the nation. Far too often we have absolute brilliance right before us and we don’t even know it. Regrettably, there are tens of thousands of Black people here in Franklin County who have absolutely no idea who Dr. Booth was.

How do I know this? Because I have for years, encouraged everyone I meet or have befriended to visit Mt. Olivet and hear the prophetic teaching from one of God’s finest preachers.

My second reaction to hearing of this great loss was one of sadness for my friend Bishop Timothy J. Clarke. Dr. Booth and Bishop Clarke were like brother’s, and I knew that the Bishop’s sadness could only be compounded because of the loss of his daughter only weeks before.

In the January 2013 edition of The Columbus African American, we featured Dr. Booth. I immensely enjoyed listening to him share the story of how he met Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Impressed by what he called his admiration for Dr. King, Dr. Booth would be exposed to this great civil rights leader on two successive occasions. “Dr. King spoke at the Gandhi Memorial Lecture when I was a junior at Howard University,” said Booth. “I had always been an admirer of Dr. King, he said. I loved his language, positions he took on civil rights issues, and the wedding of scripture with social events. He became a mentor for me from a distance.

I read everything that he wrote, his first book of sermons, Strive Toward Freedom, Why We Can’t Wait, The Trumpet of Conscious; I read them all,” Booth said.

Thanks to Dr. Booth’s friend and mentor, Dr. Harold Carter, he would have his second encounter with Dr. King in two straight days. “Dr. Carter invited me to a rally at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Baltimore where he was to introduce Dr. King”, Booth said. “I had the opportunity to meet Dr. King in close quarters.” The impact of these two experiences, coupled with his reading on Dr. King, influenced the direction of Pastor Booth’s life.

In our January 2013 article Bishop Timothy Clarke said, “ Dr. Booth has a love for the Church, a love for preaching and a love of reading.” He went on to say, Booth not only has an affinity for studying great Black preachers like Gardner C. Taylor, Bishop Sandy Ray, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. but he also has a great appreciation for giants in the ministry who are white. He is a voracious reader whose knowledge of history, religion and world events is wide and broad.

I met Dr. Charles Booth when I first became a Member of the Ohio House of Representatives in 1981. I will never forget him saying from his seat at the dais when I was the keynote speaker.....stop quoting everything and everybody. What do you believe, he said as quietly as one can with a strong baritone voice.

I admired Dr. Booth’s keen intellect, standard of excellence, pursuit of knowledge, courage, commitment to education, clarity of purpose, and unwavering belief in the power of prayer.

We talked periodically about major issues and the lack of strong leadership today. Most importantly, we shared a love of reading and referring new books to one another. It was virtually impossible to recommend a book to Dr. Booth that he had not already read.

When I established the George Washington Williams Room in the State Capitol Building, recognizing Williams as the first African American elected to the Ohio General Assembly, in 1879, I bought Booth a copy of the Biography written by Dr. John Hope Franklin. Naturally, I would quickly learn that Dr. Booth had already read the book in its entirety and was questioning me about issues in the book that only a true historian would bother to unearth.

He truly made you think and really know your subject matter.

We will miss this intellectual giant and we will miss his powerful preaching. But more importantly, we will miss his high standard of excellence in all that we embark upon for the uplift of our people. Finally, we know that while The Reverend Dr. Charles Edward Booth no longer walks amongst us, he lives in each of us whose lives were touched by this awesome man of God. “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” Our most sincere condolences to Mrs. Crystal Washington Booth, Kennedy Price, and the Mount Olivet Church family.

With Respect and Appreciation,

editor@columbusafricanamerican.com www.CAANJ.com

Ray Miller Founder & Publisher 3

The Columbus & Dayton African American • April 2019

In This Issue Sickle Cell Anemia - Is There A Cure?

20

A Champion for Lupus: A Love for Her People

21

Mercy Manor 27th Founder’s Day Luncheon

By: Manja Sankarappa

By: Ray Miller, III

Bernice I. Sumlin: 19th International President of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. By: Rodney Blount, Jr., MA

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Gene Therapy and Blood

Blood: The Horror of

Stem Cells Cure Sickle Cell

the Tuskegee Syphilis

Disease Patients

5

You’ve Got Bad

Experiment

12 32nd Annual Minority

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A Mind is a Terrible

Health Month Kickoff Event

Thing to Waste

7

Time to Spring Clean

Your Health

8

Practicing Healthy Habits

15

Food Waste is a Major Problem. Confusing Date Labels are Making It Worse

9

Many Children Are

Not Receiving HPV

16

Hypertension Study Based In African American Barbershops Honored

by Clinical Research Forum for Saving Lives

Vaccinations

April is Minority Health Month

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Six Columbus City School Seniors Receive Helen Jenkins Scholarships

19

COVER STORY

20

A Champion for Lupus: A Love for Her People

21

Mercy Manor 27th Founder’s Day Luncheon

23

Library Hires Livingston Branch Manager

24 The Difference Between

Being Schooled and

Being Educated:

Implications for

a Relevant Education Process

Cover Story – Page 19

36

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The Columbus & Dayton African American • April 2019

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25

Paving the Way

26

Legislative Update

29

Book Bags & E-Readers

32

American Exceptionalism at its Worst

33

Concussion Education and Awareness Act

33

How Early Suffragists Sold Out Black Women

34

Bond Market Basis

35

Medical Technologies: Robotics, Telemedicine and Analytics

36

Bernice I. Sumlin: 19th Interational President of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.

37

Community Events

All contents of this news journal are copyrighted © 2015; all rights reserved.

Title registration with the U.S. Patent Office pending. Reproduction or use, without written permission, of editorial or graphic content in any manner is prohibited.

Unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, and illustrations will not be returned unless accompanied by a properly addresses envelope bearing sufficient postage. Publisher assumes no responsibility for return of unsolicited materials.

MINORITY HEALTH MONTH

YOU’VE GOT BAD BLOOD: THE HORROR OF THE TUSKEGEE SYPHILIS EXPERIMENT THE INFAMOUS AND UNETHICAL CLINICAL STUDY

By Robin A. Jones, PhD What Happened? It was a Failure to Provide Treatment.

From 1932 until 1972 an experiment of ‘Untreated Syphilis’ in Negro Males (hereinafter referred to as African American) was conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service. It was a proposed six-month study which lasted 40 years. The purpose of the study was to determine whether penicillin could prevent, not just cure, syphilis infection. However, some of those who became infected never received medical treatment.

The African American men in the study were told they were receiving free health care from the United States government. There were 600 impoverished, African American of whom were sharecroppers from Macon County, Georgia. Of these men, 399 had previously contracted syphilis before the study began, and 201 did not have the disease (Ligon, 2017).

After funding for treatment ceased, the study was continued without informing the men that they would never be treated. None of the men were told that they had the disease, and none were treated with penicillin even after the antibiotic was proven to successfully treat syphilis. The men were only given placebos such as aspirin and mineral supplements.

How Did it Happen? The Study was Monitored Very Closely.

During the study, the one person who maintained records of the men and all visits was Nurse Rivers, as she became known.

She drove the men to government doctors when they visited the community. She drove a shiny station wagon with the government emblem on the front door to all appointments.

On one occasion, she followed a man to a private doctor to make sure he did not receive treatment for his Syphilis.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC, 2015), the men were told that they were being treated for “bad blood”, a colloquialism that described various conditions such as syphilis, anemia, and fatigue. “Bad blood”— specifically the collection of illnesses the term included—was a leading cause of death within the African American community.

The researchers who worked on the project knowingly and intentionally failed to treat patients appropriately. As a result, the study survived year after year of in-house review which affirmed that it was important to continue the experiment to its conclusion as late as 1966. It survived the changes made to the medical field after the atrocities inflicted on human beings during World War II, and it survived scrutiny in medical journals (CDC, 2015).

The study was finally terminated after a whistleblower leaked information, which Jean Heller used to publish in the Washington Star. In 1972 Peter Buxtun, a Whistleblower, revealed the study failures. The leak caused public outcry, which resulted in a congressional hearing. An ad hoc advisory

committee put together by the PHS and CDC found that the study was unethical and unjustified. The study was called for immediate termination.

Why Did it Happen? There were no Federal Regulations.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study (TISS) has been cited as “arguably the most infamous biomedical research study in U.S. history.”

The victims of the study, all African American, included numerous men who died of syphilis, 40 wives who contracted the disease, and 19 children born with congenital syphilis. The final study participant passed away in 2004.

As a result the federal government implemented major changes in U.S. law and regulation on the protection of participants in clinical studies. The aftermath produced the National Research Act of 1974, the Office of Human Research Protection to oversee experiments conducted on humans and the adherence to many regulations put in place such as informed consent. The National Institute of Health (NIH), and the Institutional Review Board (IRB) implemented documentation and regulation of persons involved in the studies.

President Clinton issued a 1997 apology, stating, “The United States government did something that was wrong—deeply, profoundly, morally wrong… It is not only in remembering that shameful past that we can make amends and repair our nation, but it is in remembering that past that we can build a better present and a better future.”

How many Syphilis Studies were Identified? There were Multiple.

While researching the TISS In 2010, President Barack Obama and other federal officials apologized for another unethical, U.S. sponsored medical study, conducted decades earlier in Guatemala. In that study, from 1946 to 1948, nearly 700 men 5

and women—prisoners, soldiers, mental patients—were intentionally infected with syphilis (hundreds more people were exposed to other sexually transmitted diseases as part of the study) without their knowledge or consent.

The results of the study, which took place with the cooperation of Guatemalan government officials, never were published. Dr Jean Cutler, the American public health researcher in charge of the Guatemalan project, was a lead researcher in the Tuskegee experiments.

Following Cutler’s death in 2003, historian Susan Reverby uncovered the records of the Guatemala experiments while doing research related to the Tuskegee study. She shared her findings with U.S. government officials in 2010.

Soon afterward, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius issued an apology for the STD study and President Obama called the Guatemalan president to apologize for the experiments.

The TISS is described as an illegally performed study under the guise of “medical treatment”. It was without the knowledge, consent, or informed consent of the test subjects. It was an unethical human experimentation in the United States of epic proportion.

Was it a moral compass or ethical nightmare?

There have been many articles books and interviews documenting the history of the Tuskegee Institute, and the infamous Syphilis Study. Such a tragedy. We have to continue to tell their story so that such injustices such as the poisoning of our race will never happen again, in as much as we know it.

References: Ligon (2017). Retrieved on March 21, 2019 from https://rediscovering-black-history. blogs.archives.gov/2017/05/09/if-not-forthe-public-outcry-the-tuskegee-syphilisproject-study/ CDC, (2015). Center For Disease Control.

Retrieved on March 19, 2019 Tuskegee Syphilis Study Timeline / - https://www.cdc. gov Content has been abbreviated for inclusion into the African American Journal. For additional details, please contact the references noted in the article. Thank you for reading my article.

Dr. Jones has a commitment to a strong work ethic, education and a passion for entrepreneurship. In her 40+ years of employment, Robin spent 30 of those years gainfully employed with fortune 50 companies such as GE, IBM, Ashland Oil, and the U.S. Department of Energy, and Department of Defense. Robin started her career path as a database developer building her first database for the F14 Aircraft Fighter planes and from there she catapulted her way to the position of Interim CIO. In her most recent employment capacity, Robin is a retired Senior Manager PMO Director of the Computer Center at University of California, Berkeley - Haas School of Business.

The Columbus & DaytonNews African American • April 2015 2019 The Columbus African American Journal • February

MINORITY HEALTH MONTH

A MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE

By William McCoy, MPA “A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste” was the signature slogan used by the United Negro College Fund in its fundraising campaigns for more than 40 years. This phrase was later modified to say, “A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste and a Wonderful Thing to Invest In.” These slogans apply to both the value of education, as well as the importance of a person’s mind to his or her overall health and well-being.

Val Silver’s Holistic MindBody Healing website includes several articles focused on the interrelationship between a person’s mind and health. One article, entitled the “Mind Body Spirit Connection,” says, “The mind body spirit connection is a wondrous thing.

Understanding, supporting, and tapping into its power are three pillars of holistic health and manifesting your true desires.”

Silver goes on to say, “Indigenous peoples understood a healthy mind helps create a healthy body (and) a healthy body is important if you want a healthy mind. It is not only the body that needs healing, but sometimes the mind or spirit. The body may be sick, but the mind or spirit may be the reason. When that is the case, healing the mind brings healing to the body.”

Science knows relatively little about the mind-body-spirit connection and how to make it work for people. There are numerous cases of people experiencing spontaneous or “miraculous” healing, as a result of prayer, meditation, visualization, hypnosis, and/or energy-flow techniques designed to get their subconscious mind to accept suggestions that they will heal or improve a life situation.

Many people testify to the power of the mind and/or (Holy) spirit.

Val Silver published a related article, entitled “The Placebo Effect and Mind Body Healing,” which states, “Both the placebo

effect and its opposite nocebo effect are sources of fascination for students of mind body healing and medical researchers alike.

Spontaneous healing, sham medicine and surgeries that heal as well as the real thing attest to the power of the mind.” This is one reason clinical trials for new or experimental drugs include a control group of patients that is given a placebo, like sugar pills or saline solution, instead of the drug being tested.

In addition, “sham surgeries” are used to test for real versus imagined health benefits. In a sham surgery, a patient goes through all of the steps involved in a surgical procedure, except the one with therapeutic value. Patients often report relief whether the surgery was real or not. Placebo pills and medicines have been used to help people deal with emotional problems, like a broken heart, was well as physical ailments. Studies have shown that up to one-half (50%) of some patients report improvement after being administered placebo treatments- e.g. hypnosis and acupuncture- or medications. To paraphrase a popular saying, what the mind believes the body achieves.

The Chopra Center helps clients improve their physical and mental health by strengthening their mind-body-spirit connection. The editors at Chopra.com published an online article, entitled “7 Tips for Mind-Body Balance,” which says, “Each day at the Chopra Center, we see guests who reinforce our view that our thoughts and choices and experiences influence our tendency to be healthy or become ill. A man in a toxic work environment has incapacitating headaches that don’t respond to multiple medications.

A woman decides she will no longer accept her boyfriend’s demeaning behavior, and her debilitating panic attacks “mysteriously” subside. Of course, this is not to say that all illnesses are “caused” by our thoughts. The relationship between the mind and body is complex, and sometimes things happen at

The Columbus & Dayton African American • April 2019

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a physical level for which we don’t have a plausible explanation.”

This same article offers seven tips for achieving better mind-body balance, namely: (1) take time each day to quiet your mind and meditate; (2) eat a healthy diet that includes the six Ayurvedic tastes and a wide variety of colorful fruits and vegetables; (3) move your body and engage in daily exercise; (4) take time for restful sleep; (5) release emotional toxins by writing in a journal or talking with others; (6) cultivate loving relationships; and (7) enjoy a good laugh at least once a day.

Listening, meditation, yoga, and intentional breathing are four ways to strengthen your mind-body-spirit connection, according to Dr. Carolle Jean-Murat’s online blog with the same title.

In conclusion, Val Silver said, “we have amazing potential to heal and transform ourselves through our thoughts, perceptions, and choices. The body is a magnificent network of intelligence, capable of far more than current medical science can explain.”

If you want better health, take the advice of Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions, who once encouraged listeners to “Check out your mind.” A mind truly is a terrible thing to waste.

“William McCoy is founder and president of The McCoy Company- a world-class, personal services consulting firm specializing in strategic planning, economic development, and training that helps its clients articulate and achieve their visions, solve problems, and capitalize on their opportunities. He has worked with national think tanks, held two White House appointments, and consulted with every level of government, foundations, and the private sector. Mr. McCoy holds a BA in economics and a MPA in finance, and is profiled in Who’s Who in the World and elsewhere. You can reach William McCoy at (614) 785-8497 or via e-mail wmccoy2@ themccoycompany.com. His website can be found at www.themccoycompany.com.

MINORITY HEALTH MONTH

TIME TO SPRING CLEAN YOUR HEALTH That was a saying I frequently heard in my nutrition classes years ago and it still applies.

If you’re cleaning your house, your yard, your closet, your refrigerator and everything else around you, spring clean yourself too.

Our church dance ministry is doing the 40day challenge again. It’s when we take the days from Ash Wednesday to Easter to do a spiritual and physical reset and refresh.

By Lisa Benton, MD, MPH While the recent news about the clinical trials for the drug, aducanumab, that was supposed to help slow the memory decline in early Alzheimer’s patients being stopped because the results are prolong the interval of brain deterioration in Alzheimer’s was disappointing, there was promise of pain relief and a more normal life for patients with sickle cell disease thanks to gene therapy and treating the person’s blood with stem cells.

These two approaches to treating debilitating life-altering conditions represent advances in medicine that were only on the horizon a few years ago. Today, these breakthroughs, and almost breakthrough treatments will continue to change the face of medicine.

When I was a medical student almost 30 years ago, I spent time working in a laboratory with doctors and scientists looking at the cells that caused sickle cell disease from just about every angle, but it was in a test tube and under a microscope. The hope of the research team even then was to improve the quality of life for patients with sickle cell, and without their persistence back then, the breakthrough we’re seeing now wouldn’t have happened.

Same is true with the type of treatment being tried for Alzheimer’s disease. The drug being tested was a type of monoclonal antibody. It is a protein that is crafted to be attracted to and bind to a very specific protein in your body.

When I was in residency, I worked with these proteins trying to build and train them to attach to proteins that lined blood vessels.

The hope then was use them to keep vascular grafts from clotting shut and to bind and attack cancer cells while leaving the healthy normal proteins alone. All of the research back then was done in animals and petri dishes in the lab. Not on people at all.

It’s amazing to know that now monoclonal antibodies are drugs being used to treat cancer, macular degeneration in the eye and other conditions. Again, it was the hope that scientists did not give up and that made them conduct the clinical trials again and again until something worked in people rather than animals.

These advances that will eventually cure us should encourage us to do our part to keep

our bodies healthy and in good shape since the healing and renewals may still be years away. As the elders say, “you want to keep holding on and be ready. Or do your part so God can do the rest.”

Each year I’m still surprised at how much sugar, processed food and other parts of my diet have deteriorated since the year before.

I always think I’m doing better than I am when I have the rebound sugar headache when we start our fast. I’m amazed at how far I’ve fallen down the slippery slope of adding a little whipped cream to my favorite latte, when I had started with black coffee and just added a little goat milk or organic milk without any extra sugar.

It’s analogous to how your brain, taste buds and other sensory organs respond when stimulated by illegal substances going down the path to addiction because you have a chemical imbalance. By eating healthy and learning what foods are good for you, you’ll reset your “cravings”.

For us that means using old school, low tech strategies while working with what science shows us now for a better result.

As an example, science now supports that exercising for about 30 minutes in the morning is better than at other times during the day. That doesn’t mean that if you can’t It’ll be easier to pass up on the foods you workout in the morning. shouldn’t eat. You’ll be reminded that you Absolutely not! You should still aim for 30- must be intentional about what you eat year45 minutes of walking or other exercise 4-5 round even when you decide to splurge. days a week, but you can make more out of And just as you need support, you’ll gain the time using the morning hours. It’s just accountability partners. Remember in like running up and down steps instead of a whatever goal you try to reach, you’re more longer workout on a smoother surface. By successful and more likely to succeed when fitting the exercise in early in the day it is you have a plan that works, and you work more likely to get done before you get too your plan. busy doing everything else.

Learn a Little More Here is where the benefit of doing the DNA testing that you’ve seen advertised comes Experimental gene therapy treatment gives in handy. It’s also known as the science of new hope to patients with sickle cell disease. telomeres which are the building blocks of Retrieved from NBC News online 3/10/2019. your DNA which tell almost of every cell of https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/ your body what to do and become. For about experimental-gene-therapy-treatment$50-100 you can get a specific breakdown of gives-new-hope-to-patients-with-sickle-cellwhat exercise, food, sleep, vitamins and other disease/vi-BBUBG1A life patterns are better for you. When you get your results, you’ll have a better idea of how A l z h e i m e r ’ s N e w s T o d a y R e t r i e v e d “to do you smarter and better.” from: https://alzheimersnewstoday.com/ aducanumab/ One of the easiest low-tech ways to work on your health is to spring clean your body. Best Health DNA Tests of 2019. Retrieved If you’re like me, you want to look and feel from: https://www.top10dnatests.com/ better as the winter layers come off. One of rankings/best-health-dna-tests/ the easiest mantras to remember is when it comes to eating (and just about every other Lisa D. Benton, MD, MPH (The Doctor is decision you make for yourself and the In) breastsurgeonlb@gmail.com, Twitter:@ way you live) is “Garbage in garbage out”. DctrLisa (415) 746-0627

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The Columbus Dayton African American • March 2019 The Columbus African &American News Journal • February 2015

MINORITY HEALTH MONTH

PRACTICING HEALTHY HABITS

By Jacqueline Lewis-Lyons, Psy.d The topic of health is important all year long, but I believe that most of us realize the need to make some healthy changes as the weather improves. You know what I mean. Planning a trip to a beach or attending a family reunion?

Many of us think about getting in shape for whatever special events are on the calendar.

Why not try to address our health needs as part of our own daily/weekly self-care? Let’s look at some ways to incorporate some simple habits into our routine, rather than trying to erase all the ‘damage’ done over the winter.

Self-care or self-nurturing is vital to our wellbeing. As I mentioned last month, women play many roles in taking care of others.

Now, let’s address taking care of ourselves.

As a side note, these suggestions can be just as beneficial for the gents also.

Have you just gotten drenched in pouring rain, ruining your favorite shoes and umbrella? Did you pick up the kids late from daycare…for the third time and are worried they will kick them out? Are you already exhausted and you have three calls asking for your help on the next fundraiser?

If you have experienced any of these scenarios over the last week, keep reading, my friend. It is most important that you realize that self-care is not selfish or selfindulgent. We cannot take care of others when we are on empty. That’s a fact and you know it. We have all tried to be everything to everybody but it just doesn’t work. It’s time to put yourself at the top of the list! I love

Jennifer Louden’s definition of self-nurturing – having the courage to pay attention to your own needs. It includes self-acceptance and empowerment. And, you get to celebrate being you, and the fact that you are here, fully alive and present!

Here are a few questions to ask yourself to get a picture of your current lifestyle.

1. Do you get at least 7 hours of sleep each night?

2. Do you eat something fresh and unprocessed every day?

3. Do you make time to enjoy nature and sunlight?

4. Do you drink enough water?

5. Are you giving and getting hugs?

6. Do you have techniques to manage negative emotions?

7. Do you enjoy your surroundings at home and at work? Are there beautiful things present which bring a smile to your face?

These questions are just to remind you of the importance of taking care of YOU. Let’s look at some of my favorite ways to reset and restore a sense of sanity into our busy lives.

Spending Time Outdoors – There is no substitute for fresh air and contact with nature. There is a reason we are told to stop and smell the roses. Those brief moments when you can enjoy the feel of the spring rain or find the bright pops of color forcing their way up in the garden can help give you a new appreciation for the day.

Drinking Herbal Tea – To make a proper cup of tea requires that you slow down and wait.

You may not use a kettle, microwave is fine,

The Columbus African & Dayton American African American News Journal • April • February 2019 2015

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but put some thought into how to make these few minutes special for you. I have a few favorite mugs and a variety of calming teas I enjoy in the evening. Note: This is not the time for caffeine.

Be Creative – Did you draw, paint, or sew as a child? How much did you enjoy those activities? I love to crochet and quilt. Seeing something form out of yarn and pieces of fabric bring me joy. Find something that you can do with your hands. It is very relaxing and keeps your hands out of any late-night snacks!

Take A Bath – Yes, showers are quick and efficient. That’s why taking a bath can be luxurious treat. Try a bath bomb or lavender salts to help you unwind from the day. That’s right – this is an evening activity to help you prepare for bed and a good night’s sleep.

Cuddle With Loved Ones – Physical contact has been shown to reduce blood pressure and perceived anxiety. Whether you enjoy holding hands, snuggling on the sofa, or petting your ‘fur-baby’, go ahead and share those benefits.

These are just a few activities which can enhance your mental and physical health by reducing every day stress. Find your own favorite and make sure to practice it regularly!

Dr. Jacqueline Lewis-Lyons’s office is located in north Columbus. Her practice centers on helping clients with depression and anxiety related disorders. In recent years, after discovering a love of running, she expanded her practice to include servces related to Sports Psychology for athletes of all ages and levels. To reach her, call 614-443-7040 or email her at Jacqui@DrLewisLyons.com

MINORITY HEALTH MONTH

MANY CHILDREN NOT RECEIVING HPV VACCINATION

By Ayan Warfa Not enough U.S children are receiving their HPV vaccinations at an early age, placing them at heightened risk for contracting the sexually transmitted virus later in life and being diagnosed with an HPV-related cancer, according to a recent study.

Only 16 percent of children in the U.S. have been vaccinated for HPV before age 13, said the study, published in January in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. The recommended age for HPV vaccination is 11 or 12, though vaccination can begin at age 9, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For the study, researchers from Emory University reviewed data on HPV vaccine rates from CDC’s 2016 National Immunization Survey-Teen. Reviewing vaccination records of over 20,000 people ages 13 to 17, the researchers found that almost half, or 43.4 percent, were fully vaccinated against HPV. But only 16 percent of those in the study had received the vaccination before they turned 13.

HPV vaccination by age 13 offers many health advantages, the researchers said.

The immune system response to the vaccine is much stronger when inoculation occurs before adolescents reach puberty. If vaccinated before age 15, teens need only two doses of the HPV vaccine, rather than three.

Also, inoculating people before they are

sexually active lowers the possibility that they will contract the virus in their teen and adult years. According to CDC’s National Survey of Family Growth, 11 percent of girls and 35 percent of boys have sexual intercourse before age 15. Complicating matters, unlike most STDs, HPV can be transmitted by skinto-skin contact, the study said.

“With many adolescents considering digitalgenital contact or oral sex activity as marking a loss of virginity or abstinence, unvaccinated adolescents may not recognize the risk of HPV transmission from these sexual activities, potentially exposing them to HPV even if they do not consider themselves sexually active,” the researchers said.

Adolescents can also receive the HPV vaccine at the same time they receive vaccines for tetanus, diphtheria and whooping cough — all recommended by CDC to take place between ages 11 and 12.

Eighty million people in America have HPV, and every year about 34,000 are diagnosed with an HPV-related cancer, the researchers said. HPV places women at risk for cervical, vulvar and vaginal cancers, and men at risk for penile cancer. Both genders are at risk of anal, mouth or throat cancer from the infection.

“Providers need to be aware that while we have seen gains in HPV vaccination coverage, we are still falling behind at the younger ages,” said Robert Bednarczyk, PhD, an assistant professor at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health and lead

The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

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author of the study, in a news release.

“In general, we need to do a better job of recommending the HPV vaccine at the routine, adolescent and well-child visits, with a particular focus on 11 to 12 years of age.”

Parents sometimes resist having their children vaccinated for HIV, but health providers can influence their decisions if they take the right approach, according to a February study in Pediatrics.

The study involved about 1,200 parents who were reluctant to vaccinate their children and teens for HPV. Researchers recorded each parent’s reaction to one of four videos created to address common concerns parents raise.

They found that when providers stressed urgency about their child being vaccinated, parents remained skeptical. But when providers highlighted how the vaccine can protect against certain cancers, parents were more likely to allow their child to be vaccinated. Parents also responded positively to longer conversations with providers about the HPV vaccine.

The researchers say providers need to take time to answer questions about and explain the health benefits of the HPV vaccine to reluctant parents.

For the Journal of Infectious Diseases study, visit https://academic.oup.com/jid/advancearticle/doi/10.1093/infdis/jiy682/5265326.

For the Pediatrics study, see http://pediatrics. aappublications.org/content/143/2/ e20181872.

Article from www.thenationshealth.org

The Columbus & Dayton African American • April 2019

MINORITY HEALTH MONTH

GENE THERAPY AND BLOOD STEM CELLS CURE SICKLE CELL DISEASE PATIENTS

By Yimy Villa Blood is the lifeline of the body.

The continuous, unimpeded circulation of blood maintains oxygen flow throughout the body and enables us to carry out our everyday activities. Unfortunately, there are individuals whose own bodies are in a constant battle that prevents this from occurring seamlessly. They have something known as sickle cell disease (SCD), an inherited condition caused by a mutation in a single gene. Rather than producing normal, circular red blood cells, their bodies produce sickle shaped cells (hence the name) that can become lodged in blood vessels, preventing blood flow. The lack of blood flow can cause agonizing pain, known as crises, as well as strokes. Chronic crises can cause organ damage, which can eventually lead to organ failure. Additionally, since the misshapen cells don’t survive long in the body, people with SCD have a greater risk of being severely anemic and are more prone to infections. Monthly blood transfusions are often needed to help temporarily alleviate symptoms. Due to the debilitating nature of SCD, important aspects of everyday life such as employment and health insurance can be

extremely challenging to find and maintain.

An estimated 100,000 people in the United States are living with SCD. Around the world, about 300,000 infants are born with the condition each year, a statistic that will increase to 400,000 by 2050 according to one study. Many people with SCD do not live past the age of 50. It is most prevalent in individuals with sub-Saharan African descent followed by people of Hispanic descent. Experts have stated that advances in treatment have been limited in part because SCD is concentrated in poorer minority communities.

Despite these grim statistics and prognosis, there is hope.

The New York Times and Boston Herald recently released featured articles that tell the personal stories of patients enrolled in a clinical trial conducted by bluebird bio. The trial uses gene therapy in combination with hematopoietic (blood) stem cells (HSCs) to give rise to normal red blood cells in SCD patients.

Emmanuel “Manny” Johnson was the very first patient in the SCD trial. He was motivated to participate in the trial not just for himself but for his younger brother Aiden Johnson, who was also born with SCD.

The Columbus African & Dayton African American • April 2019 American News Journal • February 2015

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Manny has a tattoo with Aiden’s name written inside a red sickle cell awareness ribbon.

In the article Manny is quoted as saying “It’s not only that we share the same blood disease, it’s like I have to do better for him.”

Since receiving the treatment, Manny’s SCD symptoms have disappeared.

For Brandon Williams of Chicago, the story of SCD is a very personal one. At just 21 years old, Brandon had suffered four strokes by the time he turned 18. His older sister, Britney Williams, died of sickle cell disease at the age of 22. Brandon was devastated and felt that his own life could end at any moment. He was then told about the SCD trial and decided to enroll. Following the treatment, his symptoms have vanished along with the pain and fear inflicted by the disease.

This SCD clinical trial has multiple trial sites across the US, one which is the UCSF Alpha Stem Cell Clinic , a CIRM funded clinic specializing in the delivery of stem cell clinical trials to patients. CIRM awarded a $7,999,999 grant to help establish an outreach campaign.

Yimmy Villa is the Marketing Manager for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

Article from www.blog.cirm.ca.gov

MINORITY HEALTH MONTH

PROVIDING AND IMPROVING HEALTH IN COLUMBUS & FRANKLIN COUNTY

By Charleta B. Tavares PrimaryOne Health initiated its first Quarterly Community Health Forum on Saturday, February 23, 2019 at their Health Center located in the Westside Health and Wellness Center, 2300 W. Broad Street. The forums are designed to address issues related to healthcare and the social determinants of health affecting the health and well-being of Columbus and Franklin County residents. Columbus City Councilwoman Priscilla Tyson, chair of the Health and Human Services Committee, Dr. Mysheika Roberts, Columbus Public Health Commissioner and Carrie Baker, President and CEO of the Healthcare Collaborative of Greater Columbus (HCGC) presented on health initiatives being conducted to address the myriad of health challenges and disparities in Columbus and Franklin County.

Carrie Baker provided information on HCGC and the organization’s efforts to work with health care providers, agencies and systems to share information, improve health outcomes and create new models of care. The pilot health record exchanges were highlighted between health and social services providers to meet the needs of their mutual patients/ clients. The participating organizations can exchange information necessary to connect the patient/client to the services needed without compromising their privacy or sharing their entire record.

Councilwoman Tyson spoke specifically to her legislative accomplishments to address food insecurity (Cols. /Franklin County Food Plan), prohibiting the sales of all tobacco products to youth under 21 and addressing

the challenges of African American/Black girls with the creation of the Commission on Black Girls. She shared information about the partnerships with community-based organizations to create community gardens to provide fresh produce and the expansion of farmers markets in Columbus/Franklin County. In addition, she discussed the impact of fresh fruits and vegetables in promoting the health and well-being of children and families.

Dr. Roberts highlighted Columbus Public Health’s initiatives to address infant mortality with a new evidenced-based home visiting program, efforts to tackle the opioid crisis with Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) and reducing HIV, STD’s and Hepatitis A, B, C with CPH’s partnership with Safe Point and their new needle exchange model.

Dr. Roberts provided information on the expansion of CPH’s services to assist residents battling opiate addiction, along with other substance use and alcohol disorders.

She shared information on the increase in

Comprehensive.

Hepatitis A cases in Franklin County and that CPH has vaccines available for anyone infected.

The next Quarterly Community Health Forum will be held on May 18, 2019 from 9:30 – 11:30am. “Our goal is to inform, educate and empower our residents to advocate for the healthcare needs of our community,” stated Charleta B. Tavares, CEO, PrimaryOne Health. For more information visit www.primaryonehealth.org, Facebook @primaryonehealth or Twitter @ primary1health.

Charleta B. Tavares is the Chief Executive Officer at PrimaryOne Health, a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) system providing comprehensive primary care, OB-GYN, pediatric, vision, dental, behavioral health and specialty care at 10 locations in Central Ohio. The mission is to provide access to services that improve the health status of families including people experiencing financial, social, or cultural barriers to health care. www. primaryonehealth.org.

Join PrimaryOne Health for our Annual Community Meeting and Reception Join us as we unveil our Annual Report and share with the community how we are working to improve the health status of central Ohio families.

Monday, May 13, 2019 Columbus Metropolitan Library Downtown 96 S. Grant Ave, Auditorium 5pm - 7pm

Convenient.

Heavy hors d’oeuvres will be served.

Caring.

® 11 convenient Central Ohio locations offering: Primary Care • Ob/Gyn • Pediatrics Behavioral Health • Physical Therapy • Adult Medicine Dietetics • Vision • Dental

primaryonehealth.org • 2780 Airport Drive, Ste. 100 • Columbus, OH 43219 • 614.645.5500 11

The Columbus & DaytonNews African American • April 2015 2019 The Columbus African American Journal • February

MINORITY HEALTH MONTH

THE OHIO COMMISSION ON MINORITY HEALTH CELEBRATES ITS 32 ND ANNIVERSARY AND THE 2019 MINORITY HEALTH MONTH EXPO The Ohio Commission on Minority Health celebrated its 32nd Anniversary with their annual Minority Health Expo in Columbus. The event was held in the Verne Riffe Center where community members were greeted my representatives from various health organizations, stakeholders and state elected officials. Tracy Townsend of WBNS 10TV served as the master of ceremonies. Following the opening session, participants were able to visit with various vendors and engage in activities such as line dancing, Tai Chi and more.

The Health Expo serves as the official kick-off to celebrate Minority Health Month during the month of April. Various activities and health related events will take place throughout the state. For a complete listing of events in your city, visit their website at www.MIH.Ohio.gov. Below are photos from this year’s event.

In 1987, the Ohio Commission on Minority Health became the first freestanding state agency in the nation to address the disparity that exists between the health status of minority and non-minority populations. Today, there are Offices of Minority Health in 47 states. The Commission’s mission is to eliminate disparities in minority health through innovative strategies and financial opportunities, public health promotion, legislative action, public policy and systems change.

For more information on the Ohio Commission on Minority Health, please contact the Commission at (614) 466-4000.

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1. Tracy Townsend - Mistress of Ceremonies - WBNS 10TV, 2. CMH Staff, Volunteers and Board Members 3. Director Angela Dawson, Dr. and CMH Staff 4. Charleta Tavares - Former State Senator, CEO of PrimaryOne Health speaks to the crowd. 5. Charleta Tavares shares remarks. 6. Health vendor draws blood for screening. 7. Community Action Pathways shares information about their program.

8. Participant receives a back massage. 9. Seated exercise class. 10. Participants visit one of the many health vendors. All Photos by Shelle Fisher

The Columbus African & Dayton American African American News Journal • April • February 2019 2015

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2ND ANNUAL

AARP Fit & Fun Health Challenge MAY 1 – JUNE 30

Let’s get happier, get healthier and get walking together! It’s time to grab a buddy for AARP’s second annual walking challenge and sweepstakes!

WALK 30 Minutes a Day

The challenge? Starting May 1, walk for 30 minutes a day, every day for eight weeks. Then visit AARP’s Fit & Fun site daily to track your progress, stay inspired by AARP Wellness Ambassador Denise Austin, and share photos with other walkers across the country.

Just by entering, you will earn a chance to win a spa getaway for two!

No purchase necessary. Enter anytime between May 1 and June 30.

INVITE a Friend to Join You

Whether you are just getting started, a fitness fanatic, or anywhere in between, this challenge is designed to be fun and rewarding. We’ll be here every step of the way, sharing fresh videos and inspiration each week to help you build a healthy habit that lasts a lifetime.

Your health is a journey that we can all take together, one step at a time.

Take on the Fit & Fun Health Challenge Today!

To get started, join the challenge at www.aarp.org/challenge.

Then spread the word to family and friends! #fitfunchallenge

ENTER to Win 13

The Columbus & DaytonNews African American • April 2015 2019 The Columbus African American Journal • February

MARLA P. AUGUST ‘62 – JUNE ‘ 94

Life didn’t end for Marla. It got better. At ADAMH – and the 30+ not-for-profit agencies we partner with – our mission is to change lives in our community for the better. By helping people recovering from addiction and mental illness get the help they need to start living happier, healthier, fuller lives. So, they can get better.

ADAMH – Where better begins. adamhf ranklin.org

The Columbus & Dayton African American • April 2019

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The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

MINORITY HEALTH MONTH

FOOD WASTE IS A MAJOR PROBLEM. CONFUSING DATE LABELS ARE MAKING IT WORSE.

By Elaine S. Povich Rummaging through your refrigerator, you come across a jar of mayonnaise labeled “BEST IF USED BY 06/10/19.” If it’s midJuly, are you risking illness by slathering it on your sandwich and eating it?

It’s hard to say.

Massachusetts and New Jersey are considering measures to clear up the confusion, following a California law that went into effect earlier this year. Several other states also are looking at labeling bills, as anti-food waste groups advocate for clearer signs to indicate when food is okay to eat, even if it’s not the freshest.

A bill that would establish federal standards for the labels, first introduced in 2016, has gone nowhere in Congress. Meanwhile, 43 states have their own rules, but they vary widely. Most limit labeling requirements to certain items, such as milk or shellfish. Some states prohibit the sale of past-date foods, and about half restrict donations of them. And the seven states without any laws leave it up to manufacturers.

The result: confusion for retailers and consumers, who throw out tons of food that is perfectly safe to eat.

Manufacturers largely include the labels to let retailers know when they should pull the product from their shelves, said Katy Franklin, operations manager at ReFED, a Berkeley, California-based nonprofit that focuses on reducing food waste.

“You might think this product isn’t safe after the date, but what it really means is that this food is not at peak quality after this date,” Franklin said.

More than a third of the food in the United States goes to waste — about 400 pounds a year per American. Food is the largest category of waste in landfills, where it generates methane that contributes to global warming. Discarding past-date food is a huge cost for retailers.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans are going hungry.

Food date labeling began in the 1970s, when consumers began to see an increase in packaged foods, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council’s seminal study, “The Dating Game: How Confusing Food Date Labels Lead to Food Waste in America.”

But in the absence of clear definitions and standards, food manufacturers tagged foods with whatever label they wanted, leading to confusion that persists today.

Advocates want the labels to be standardized and clearly defined, even if manufacturers continue to set the dates.

Federal legislation introduced by U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, and a

companion bill by U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine, both Democrats, would have established a national system limited to one quality date indicator (“best if used by”) and one safety date indicator (“expires on”). Food manufacturers would have been allowed to forgo the quality date indicator, but the safety date indicator would have been mandatory for a small group of perishable foods.

The bill also would have eliminated state laws barring the sale or donation of food past the quality date, though states would have been allowed to prohibit the past-date sale or donation of expired foods.

“The label that you see may mean a hundred different things to a hundred different manufacturers,” Pingree told WGME-TV, a Maine station, last month. She said she plans to reintroduce the bill this year.

“We want people to be able to pick it up, look at it, and know that it means one thing.”

Confused Consumers In a study published in February, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that 84 percent of those surveyed discarded food on or near the package date “at least occasionally,” and 37 percent reported they “always” or “usually” discard food near that date, regardless of the words surrounding the date.

“More than half of participants incorrectly thought that date labeling was federally regulated or reported being unsure,” the study said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration offers a free “FoodKeeper” app to help consumers decide whether food is safe.

But except for infant formula, the federal government does not require product dating.

In 2017, the Food Marketing Institute (which represents grocers and other food retailers) and the Grocery Manufacturers Association (which represents food and beverage manufacturers) announced a voluntary standard, paring down the numerous labels to two: “best if used by,” referring to product quality, and “use by,” referring to safety.

But the voluntary labeling has done little to end the confusion, said Roni Neff, assistant professor and program director at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, which oversaw the report.

“There is still a need to understand what the labels mean,” she said in an interview with Stateline. “No education has been done to explain the new voluntary labels, and there’s no reason to think people would have magically acquired that knowledge.”

Neff added that how a food is stored plays a large role in how long it stays fresh or safe.

“If you left something out for a long time, there’s no label that’s going to tell you that.”

Voluntary Standard But Meghan Stasz, vice president for packaging and sustainability at the Grocery Manufacturers Association, thinks the

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voluntary system should help ease confusion.

Stasz said the group’s 300 companies are phasing in the labels, and that 87 percent of members’ products already carry them. The system should be fully phased in by next year.

If there is a public information campaign, it would begin at that point, Stasz said.

David Fikes, vice president for communications at the Food Marketing Institute, acknowledged that there is “great deal of education that needs to be done.

We’re getting the labels down first and then saying, ‘Here’s how you need to interpret it.’”

The state bills pending in Massachusetts and New Jersey both call for only two categories.

California’s new law, which is the most comprehensive state law, requires the state Department of Food and Agriculture to encourage food processors to use uniform terms on food product labels — “best if used or frozen by” and “use or freeze by” to communicate quality and safety dates.

Under the California law, “best if used by” or “best if used or frozen by” indicates the quality of the product, and “use by” or “use or freeze by” indicates the safety of the product.

But neither label includes a definition to help consumers determine when they should discard it.

California state Assemblyman David Chiu, author of the 2017 law, said major food manufacturers have begun to use the labels, but many smaller manufacturers have not.

The California bill does not require date labels, but if a date label is put on a product, it must use one of the two standard phrases.

Chiu, a Democrat, said he hopes other states will follow California in approving standardized labels for all processed foods.

“Every part of the food chain is throwing out food that could be eaten,” Chiu said.

Massachusetts state Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Democrat who authored the labeling standardization bill pending in his state, said a voluntary standard is not enough. “The thing is, nobody knows what that means. If you have a ‘sell by’ date, and it’s beyond the ‘sell by’ date, you may know you can consume the food, but you don’t know for how long,” he said.

New Jersey state Sen. Linda Greenstein, a Democrat who has championed a similar bill in her state, agreed that the current labels are far too confusing for consumers.

“Anything we can do to make food labeling understandable to people is a good thing,” she said.

Elaine S. Povich covers consumer affairs for Stateline. She also has worked as a freelancer for the Washington Post, the Fiscal Times, Governing, Kiplinger and AARP Bulletin.

She is an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of Maryland. A native of Bath, Maine, Povich graduated from Cornell University and holds a Master’s Certificate in Multimedia Journalism from the University of Maryland.

Article from www.pewtrusts.org

The Columbus & Dayton African American • April 2019

MINORITY HEALTH MONTH

HYPERTENSION STUDY BASED IN AFRICAN AMERICAN BARBERSHOPS HONORED BY CLINICAL RESEARCH FORUM FOR SAVING LIVES

Barber Eric Muhammad takes patron Marc Sims’ blood pressure at his Inglewood, CA shop - A New You. (Photo by Cedar-Sinai)

The Clinical Research Forum recognized the Cedars-Sinai’s Smidt Heart Institute with a 2019 Top Ten Clinical Research Achievement Award for its study aimed at developing a blood-pressure control program for African-American men in the comfortable and convenient environments of their barbershops.

In just six short months, the study – first published in the New England Journal of Medicine and led by the late hypertension expert Ronald G. Victor, MD – improved the outcomes and control of high blood pressure in more than 60 percent of participants.

The 12-month data published recently in the peer-reviewed journal Circulation backs up the results, proving that a pharmacistled, barbershop-based medical intervention can successfully lower blood pressure in African-American men who face a higher risk of disability and premature death due to uncontrolled high blood pressure.

Not only are black men disproportionately affected by hypertension, they’re also the least likely population to seek treatment.

Nearly 64% of the study participants who worked with their barber and a pharmacist at the barbershop were able to lower their blood pressure.

Barber Eric Muhammad says that’s one reason he was so enthusiastic about the study.

He’d hosted other single-day awareness events about hypertension, but Dr. Victor’s study aimed to find a long-term solution for treating high blood pressure.

“High blood pressure has cost the lives and health of a lot of good men,” Muhammad

said. “What’s different about this study is it looks at bringing down blood pressure by using the men’s community—their friends, family, and support group.”

The collaboration between physicians, pharmacists and barbers showed that medical intervention in neighborhood settings can profoundly improve the health of hard-to-reach, underserved communities.

Cedars-Sinai was nominated for the award by researchers at UCLA, the University of California, Los Angeles.

“This esteemed award is a true honor for our institution and the medical team who was driven to change and improve outcomes for this at-risk community,” said Ravi Thadhani, MD, MPH, vice dean of Research and Education at Cedars-Sinai, who accepted the award this week at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The Barbershop study was funded in part by a grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health and a CTSI grant from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.

The barbershop study is one of 10 awardwinning studies identified by the Clinical Research Forum. Winners must exemplify major advances, resulting from the nation’s investment in research, to benefit the health and welfare of its citizens, and reflect the influential work being conducted by investigators at nearly 60 research institutions and hospitals across the United States, as well as at partner institutions from around the world. All nominated studies were published in peer-reviewed journals between November 2017 and December 2018.

The Columbus African & Dayton African American • April 2019 American News Journal • February 2015

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Winners were selected based on the degree of innovation and novelty involved in the advancement of science; contribution to the understanding of human disease and/or physiology; and potential impact upon the diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of disease.

“It has been the privilege of a lifetime to work on this novel research and equally as rewarding to be part of an elite group of researchers recognized for their outstanding contributions to science,” said C. Adair Blyler, PharmD, an author on the study and one of two clinical pharmacists from the Smidt Heart Institute who traveled to AfricanAmerican barbershops throughout Los Angeles to treat patients. “With these positive results behind us, we will now shift our focus to identifying cost-effective ways to broaden barbershop-based care and implement this novel model to other high-risk communities outside of Los Angeles County.”

Eduardo Marbán, MD, PhD, director of the Smidt Heart Institute, noted that Victor was the first to prove that if barbers offered blood pressure checks during men’s haircuts and encouraged patrons with hypertension to follow up with physicians, hundreds of lives could be saved annually.

“Not only do we miss Ron’s smile and smarts, but science is all the much poorer for his loss,” said Marbán. “Our institution will forever attempt to carry on his scientific ingenuity, passion for serving his community and commitment to advancing the field of clinical research. Right now, plans are underway to expand the barbershop study.”

Article from www.goodblacknews.org

MINORITY HEALTH MONTH

APRIL IS MINORITY HEALTH MONTH The Ohio Commission on Minority Health created and designated April as Minority Health Month. The first of which was held in April 1989 as a statewide, 30-day wellness campaign. Minority Health Month was designed to promote healthy lifestyles, provide crucial information to allow individuals to practice disease prevention, showcase the resources for providers of grass roots healthcare, disseminate information, highlight the resolution of the disparate health conditions between Ohio’s minority and non-minority populations, and to gain additional support for the on-going efforts to improve minority health year-round. In 2000, Minority Health Month became a national celebration.

The Commission kicked off the kicked off Minority Health Month-2019, on Thursday, March 7, 2019 with a statewide expo. This annual event draws attention to the fact that we must implement cost effective strategies along with policy and legislative solutions in order to achieve health equity and eliminate health disparities.

We were pleased to have Tracy Townsend of WBNS-10TV news, who is committed to raising public awareness on health issues, as are our Mistress of Ceremonies. During this event, our keynote speaker, Charleta B. Tavares, CEO of PrimaryOne Health challenged attendees to participate in the legislative process, insist upon the use of evidence-based models that are effective on the targeted populations as well as the prioritization of health equity in Ohio.

This statewide event was made possible through the generous support of corporate sponsors. This year’s sponsors included: Buckeye Health Plan, CareSource, Molina, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Ohio Health, Ohio State University-Wexner Medical Center, Ohio University-Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, PrimaryOne Health, and ProMedica.

Since 1987, the Ohio Commission on Minority Health (OCMH) has been at the forefront of addressing health disparities and health inequities in Ohio.

According to the National Stakeholder Strategy for Achieving Health Equity (2011), the research has shown that racial and ethnic minorities are far more likely to suffer from preventable health conditions, are more likely to get sick, and have serious complications and die from these conditions. It is without question that health disparities represent significant burdens for these individuals and their families. However, there are additional societal and financial burdens borne by our state as a whole. These burdens establish both ethical and tangible mandates to reduce health disparities and achieve health equity.

The persistent nature of health inequities, the effect of social determinants and new opportunities for systemic change requires expertise to address old challenges and maximize new opportunities.

One opportunity is to ensure that all state level efforts ensure a focus on the elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities with a health equity lens.

According to the Health Policy Institute of Ohio’s 2017 Health Value Dashboard, Ohio

ranks 46th in the Nation for health care value.

This dashboard emphasizes, “Ohio struggles when it comes to addressing population health.” Achieving health equity requires a focus on eliminating health disparities and inequities across population groups.

To this end, the Commission collaborates with state agencies, health systems, policy makers, managed care organizations and communities to identify effective policies and strategies that can improve health outcomes, eliminate disparities, reduce costs and achieve health equity.

An example of an effective policy strategy would be to require the use of effective and culturally appropriate models that have been proven to produce outcomes on the targeted minority and at risk population; to include a focus on the reduction of African American infant mortality.

With regard to implementation, one such example would be to expand the state’s investment to fully scale the Certified Community Pathways Hub model, which is designed to reduce infant mortality; to include a targeted focus on disparity reduction. The Commission seed funded the Ohio model in the late 90’s, replicated the model in 2010 and initiated bringing this model to scale across the state in 2016.

This is a nationally certified, evidencebased, peer-reviewed, pay-for-performance, care coordination model. The model’s effectiveness is largely connected to the use of certified community health workers who address the needs of high-risk pregnant women through the establishment of “20 pathways” that connect to social determinants of health such as housing, education, employment, transportation, behavioral health services, safe sleep education, as well as access to quality prenatal care. The use of these “pathways” provide a structured vehicle to address systemic barriers, which exist outside of the clinical care environment.

More importantly, this model has demonstrated success in Ohio, as of February 23, 2019, our preliminary data for 2018, reveals that all six of our Hubs which are located in Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Mansfield, Toledo and Youngstown have improved preterm births and low birth weight rates when compared to their county averages for African American singleton births. Collectively, in 2018, the six Hubs have served 605 high-risk pregnant women of which 62% were African American.

Currently, all of the Ohio Medicaid Managed Care plans contract with this model. Buckeye Health Plan initiated a retrospective study of over 3,700 deliveries from 2013-2017, focusing on the Toledo Hub. This study identified a 236% return on investment with per/member per/month savings for high, medium and low risk members. In addition, the study highlighted that women in the HUB area who did not participate in the HUB services had a 1.55 times greater likelihood of having an infant that needed Special Nursery Care or Neonatal ICU Services (Lucas, 2018). According the March of Dimes, the average length of stay for a baby admitted to the NICU is 13.2 days. The average cost of a NICU admission is $76,000 with charges exceeding $280,000 for infants born prior to

The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

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32 weeks gestation (March of Dimes, 2011).

As state and local efforts seek out strategies to improve African American infant mortality rates, this model is documented to clearly be worth the investment.

In addition, the Commission supports policy efforts to implement Health and Equity in all Policies (HEiAP) legislation. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation defines HEiAP as an evolving approach that uses tools such as Health Impact Assessments to identify ways that policy decisions in sectors such as transportation, education, energy, housing, agriculture, commerce and others may affect population health outcomes. This innovative framework emphasizes the importance of addressing health factors such as disparities and inequities by ensuring policies have a neutral or beneficial impact on the social determinants of health.

Furthermore, the Commission’s strategic policy efforts will continue to center on: • Increasing the awareness of the significance of health disparities; • broadening the leadership to address health disparities at all levels; • improving quality healthcare access, workforce diversity and cultural/linguistic competency; as well as • the availability and meaningful use of disaggregated health data and research for all racial and ethnic populations.

We encourage you to participate in Minority Health Month and remind you that during April, there will be events held throughout the state of Ohio. These Minority Health Month events will focus on the promotion of healthy lifestyles, screening activities, and the provision of crucial health information to allow individuals to practice disease prevention.

The 2019 Statewide Calendar of Events is posted at www.mih.ohio.gov on the Commission’s website.

Each year, the Commission releases funding in June for Minority Health Month initiatives for the upcoming year.

Please note, the Commission will release funding in the coming months for innovative and culturally specific programs that address health disparities. To learn more about these funding opportunities, visit our website at www.mih.ohio.gov.

Happy Minority Health Month!

References: Health Policy Institute of Ohio. (2017, March 1). 2017 Health Policy Dashboard. Retrieved from https://www.healthpolicyohio.org/2017health-value-dashboard/ Lucas, B. (2018). Improved Birth Outcomes through Health Plan and Community Hub Partnership.

Lucas, B. (2018). Lower First Year of Life Costs for Babies through Health Plan and Community Hub Partnership.

National Partnership for Action. National Stakeholder Strategy. (2011, April). US Department of Health and Human Services Offices of Minority Health. Retrieved from http://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/npa/templates/ content.aspx?lvl=1&lvlid=33&ID=286.

The Columbus & Dayton African American • April 2019

COMMUNITY

SIX COLUMBUS CITY SCHOOL SENIORS RECEIVE HELEN JENKINS DAVIS SCHOLARSHIPS

“We had the pleasure of meeting with some of Columbus City Schools’ finest students,” said Gwen Wade, Helen Jenkins Davis Scholarship Lunch Bunch President.

“Each [student] was articulate, personable, enthusiastic and an absolute joy.”

Columbus, Ohio - On Wednesday, April 10 at 11:00 a.m., six high- achieving Columbus City schools graduating seniors will receive upwards of $1000.00 in college scholarships at the Helen Jenkins Davis Lunch Bunch Scholarship Awards Luncheon. The event will be held at The Berwick on Refugee Rd.

at Walnut Ridge High School who plans to attend Columbus State Community College and study Biology-Veterinary Medicine and William Wilder, of Walnut Ridge High School/Downtown High School who plans to take up studies in Architecture at The Ohio State University.

This year’s scholarship recipients are: Jennifer Adomako of Centennial High School who plans to pursue studies in Marketing at the University of Cincinnati; Jaelynn Barnes from Northland High School who will attend Denison University to study Bio-Chemistry; Asali Hamilton, student at Eastmoor Academy High School who will attend North Carolina A&T University to pursue Architecture; Malika Payne from Centennial High School, who will attend Miami University or The Ohio State University to pursue Architecture; Brianna White, student

This award is given to students who have maintained a minimum 3.0 cumulative grade point average and present an official high school transcript, 2 letters of recommendation from a school counselor, teacher or administrator and have above average ACT or SAT scores. Scholarship candidates must provide, a college acceptance letter, a personal essay and demonstrate financial need. Students also need to demonstrate a level of community involvement and Additional information about the organization complete a personal interview with the Lunch and or the awards luncheon can be obtained by contacting Gwen Wade at 614-560-1343.

Bunch Scholarship committee.

The Columbus African & Dayton African American • April 2019 American News Journal • February 2015

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The Helen Jenkins Davis Scholarship Fund Lunch Bunch was founded in 1987

by Columbus School educators Catherine Willis and the late Thelma Givens. The scholarships are both a tribute and a memorial to the legacy of school desegregation pioneer Helen Jenkins Davis who committed her professional life as an educator to mentoring and motivating the city’s underprivileged and at-risk Black students.

COVER STORY A CURE FOR SICKLE CELL ANEMIA?

By Marty Miller Visit a park on a warm summer day and you will find five-year old children running and tumbling. They are playing hide and seek and exploring their surroundings. They are laughing, playing tag and learning new things. But for one in 13 African American babies born in the United States with sickle cell anemia, “normal” has a different definition. It is estimated that more than half of babies with sickle cell disease die before their fifth birthday adding to the reported hundreds of thousands of people this disease kills every year.

The American Society for Hematology estimates that 70,000 – 100,000 Americans have sickle cell disease. In fact, sickle cell disease is most common in people of African descent, including African Americans. One in 12 African Americans carries a sickle cell gene. Other ethnic groups where sickle cell disease is prominent include Hispanic-Americans from Central and South America and people of Asian, Indian and Mediterranean descent.

Sickle cell disease is an inherited blood disorder which causes the production of abnormal hemoglobin. Normal hemoglobin, which lives inside red blood cells, attaches to oxygen in the lungs and carries it to all parts of the body. Healthy red blood cells are ovalshaped and flexible so they can move through the smallest blood vessels. But with sickle cell disease, the abnormal hemoglobin causes the red blood cells to be rigid and shaped like the letter “C.” The “C” shape is why the disease is named sickle cell. These inflexible, irregular-shaped blood cells can get stuck and block the flow of blood.

The blockage of blood flow can result in excruciating pain anywhere blood circulates in the body. Healthy organs depend on a healthy flow of red blood cells. When the blood flow is blocked by sickle cells, organ damage can result as well as other disabilities.

Infections are also common in people with sickle cell anemia.

One of the worst complications, short of premature death, may be stroke. The Stroke Center/Internet Stroke Center reports that strokes occur most commonly in children with sickle cell disease at age five. The Center goes on to state that the majority of strokes in persons with sickle cell disease occur between the ages of three – 14. Strokes can result in learning disabilities, loss of speech or memory, paralysis and the risk of another stroke.

Most persons with sickle cell disease are given treatments to help them manage and live with the disease. According to the University of Rochester Medical Center these treatments may include pain medicines, drinking plenty of fluids, blood transfusions, vaccines and antibiotics and regular eye exams among others. The type of treatment

given depends on the individual’s symptoms.

According to the Office of Minority Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a bone marrow or stem cell transplant may be a cure; however, these are high risk options that require a close donor match and are used only in severe cases.

But there may be a new treatment option; a real cure that’s not on the horizon but already here. What about using altered DNA to cure sickle cell disease? Has, in fact, a cure been found using gene therapy which locates and fixes the errant genes? Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health and Dr. John Tisdale with the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute with the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C. have reason to believe they have found a cure for sickle cell disease. The breakthrough was highlighted on a recent segment of 60 Minutes on CBS. The segment focused on the journey of Jennelle Stephenson, one of nine African American patients who chose to take part in NIH’s clinical trial to find a cure for sickle cell disease.

The process was risky. Stephenson’s stem cells were genetically modified and reinjected into her body. But to get the “corrected” gene into her body, the doctors used weakened HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, because HIV is “good at transferring DNA into cells.” The segment explained how they were able to do this to get the corrected DNA to produce healthy red blood cells.

After nine months, Stephenson’s blood cells looked normal and Stephenson had a new lease on life. Walking, running, swimming and training in Jiu-Jitsu – all things she could not do before. And she is not alone.

60 Minutes reported that the other patients in the clinical trial are all responding well.

However, Dr. Collins cautioned that we are still years away from improving the treatment to make it more widely available.

The possible breakthrough in curing sickle cell anemia begs the bigger question of why African Americans are underrepresented in clinical trials requiring consent. An obvious reason is distrust of the medical establishment which stems from the infamous and unethical Tuskegee Study conducted by the U.S. government from 1932-1972. In this study, 19

African American sharecroppers with syphilis were left untreated without their consent.

In fact, the participants thought they were receiving treatment. Even when penicillin was found to treat syphilis, the patients were not given the drug. They were lied to for 40 years. It should be noted that major changes in the laws and regulations around clinical trials to protect participants were instituted as a result of the Tuskegee Study.

But then there is the case of Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman whose cancerous cells were harvested in 1951 without her knowledge or the knowledge of her family and have been used ever since for biomedical research. When Lacks’ case came to light, it fueled the distrust African Americans have of medical institutions.

The decision to participate in a clinical trial is a personal one and we have reason to be conflicted. On the one hand is our history with the medical establishment and the fact that not all clinical trials have successful endings. There are risks involved. On the other hand, there is the suffering of our people who are waiting on cures to be discovered.

This brings to the forefront the words of the hymn immortalized by gospel icon Mahalia Jackson: If I can help somebody, as I pass along If I can cheer somebody, with a word or song If I can show somebody, that he’s travelling wrong Then my living shall not be in vain My living shall not be in vain Then my living shall not be in vain If I can help somebody, as I pass along Then my living shall not be in vain If I can do my duty, as a good man ought If I can bring back beauty, to a world up wrought If I can spread love’s message, as the Master taught Then my living shall not be in vain For information on the sickle cell clinical trial referenced in this article, go to the National Institutes of Health’s Cure Sickle Cell Initiative at https://clinicalstudies.info. nih.gov/ProtocolDetails.aspx?A_14-H-0155. html. Be sure to talk with and seek the advice of your health care provider.

Marty Miller is a Consultant specializing in the areas of health care, behavioral health and poverty. Miller is the former CEO of Heart of Ohio Family Health Centers. Prior to that she was the CEO of Miller Public Relations which played a vital role in the successful development and execution of numerous local and statewide initiatives. She can be reached at marlene.miller101@gmail. com.

The Columbus & DaytonNews African American • April 2015 2019 The Columbus African American Journal • February

MINORITY HEALTH MONTH

A CHAMPION FOR LUPUS: A LOVE OF HER PEOPLE

By Manju Sankarappa Charlotte Bell was one of the original founding members of the first chapter of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women (NC100BW) in Columbus, Ohio. She along with the other founders wanted to address the needs of African American women in Columbus. The organization, under its first president, Lynn Eaton focused on healthcare, economic security, education and advocacy.

One of the members, Mariette (Carson) Polite shared her story of her mother who had suffered and later died with Lupus. Lupus is a systemic autoimmune disease that occurs when your body’s immune system attacks your own tissues and organs. Inflammation caused by lupus can affect many different body systems — including your joints, skin, kidneys, blood cells, brain, heart and lungs.

Mrs. Bell started on her journey to learn more about Lupus after hearing Mariette’s heartbreaking story of her mom and how African American women are three-times more likely to get lupus than white women.1 Lupus is also more common in Hispanic, Asian, and Native American and Alaskan Native women.2 African-American and Hispanic women usually get lupus at a younger age and have more severe symptoms, including kidney problems, than women of other groups.

African-Americans with lupus also have more problems with seizures, strokes, and dangerous swelling of the heart. Hispanic women with lupus also have more heart problems than women of other groups.

Researchers think that genes play a role in how lupus affects minority women.3 After learning more about the needs and services unavailable to women of color and especially, economically challenged African American women, Mrs. Bell started her listening, learning and advocacy journey.

She wanted to do something because she loved her people. First, she found that all of the Lupus Support Groups were in suburban areas of Franklin County with the nearest to the eastside being at the Elizabeth Blackwell Center at Riverside Hospital. She understood the disease and transportation challenges and worked with Deidre Hamlar, a local artist with a gallery in her father’s Dental Building to establish a Lupus Support Group on Bryden Road. The building was on the bus line and on the near eastside of Columbus where a large number of African American women resided.

Next, Mrs. Bell worked with Dr. Robert Hackshaw at the Ohio State University to address the needed education, research and advocacy for patients, healthcare professionals, families, policymakers and the public. She brought the healthcare issue

SAVE THE DATE Saturday, May 4, 2019 10AM to 1PM Parish Hall at First Congregational Church UUC

444 E. Broad St. Columbus, OH 43215

to then State Representatives Ray Miller, Jr. and Jane Campbell who were on the House Finance and Appropriations Committee to advocate for Lupus funding specifically to address the needs of African American and women of color in the Ohio Commission on Minority Health’s Budget.

Mrs. Bell successfully educated and advocated the members of the Ohio General Assembly for state funding for Lupus to focus on the needs of African American and women of color throughout Ohio – this is why we are honoring and continuing her work at the Lupus Summit to be held on May 4, 2019.

The & Dayton African American • April 2019 The Columbus Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

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Fernandez, M., Calvo-Alen, J., Alarcon, G.S., et al. (2005). Systemic lupus erythematosus in a multiethnic US cohort (LUMINA): XXI. Disease activity, damage accrual, and vascular events in pre- and postmenopausal women. Arthritis Rheum; 52:1655–1664.

2 Dall’Era M. Chapter 21. Systemic lupus erythematosus. In: Imboden JB, Hellman DB, Stone JH. (Eds). Current Rheumatology Diagnosis and Treatment. 3rd ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill; 2013.

3 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office on Women’s Health womenshealth.gov 1

Manju Sankarappa is the Executive Director Ohio Asian American Health Coalition.

MERCY MANOR 27TH FOUNDER’S DAY LUNCHEON JOURNEY TO RECOVERY: BODY, MIND AND SPIRIT 1

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1. Mrs. Reaner Jackson (Volunteer of Mercy Manor for 27 years), Kurt and Shannon Jackson 2. Mistress of Ceremonies - Letitia Perry of WHIO TV 3. Jenell Ross - President/Bob Ross Buick/GMC/Mercedes of Dayton 4. Barbara Hudson-Banner - Executive Director of Mercy Manor 5. Keynote Speaker - Ray Miller 6. Guests arrive at the Lincoln Theatre. 7. Sisters of the Precious Blood 8. Ray Miller and James Bolden 9. 10. 11. Mayor of Trotwood - Honorable Mary A. McDondald 12. Jamesetta Lewis - Co-Chair of Luncheon 13. Carmen Hefner and Jessica Plumer - Residents of Mercy Manor 14. The Men of God Ensemble

By Ray Miller, III To paraphrase The oft-quoted poet Edgar Guest, “One who stands with honor learns to hold his honor dear, For right living speaks a language which to everyone is clear. Though an able speaker charms me with his eloquence, I say, I’d rather see a sermon than to hear one, any day.”

The Presidential Banquet Center in Kettering, Ohio was transformed on Saturday, March 16th from an elegant dining and entertainment venue to a place of redemption, total transparency, and genuine thankfulness.

The occasion was the 27th Founders’ Day Luncheon and Fundraiser held by Mercy Manor.

Heartfelt expressions were fully shared by the program participants who had made the difficult decision to substantially change the narrative of their life and become honest, productive, empowered, and contributing citizens. Each speaker and honoree was a walking testament to the power of having God in your life and forgiveness in your heart.

Their example was the sermon that touched lives and opened the hearts and minds of the 300 guests who were in attendance. They were the embodiment of the organization’s foundational scripture: “Judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy.

But Mercy triumphs over judgment .”

Barbara Hudson-Banner, Executive Director of Mercy Manor, Inc. said, “This organization was the dream of Sister Jean 21

Foppe. In 1992 this dream became a reality under the leadership of Church Women United when Mercy Manor opened its doors to five women. Today, the organization has served more than 170 women in the residential program and many others have received supportive services through the Mercy Manor staff, community agencies, the religious community, and volunteers throughout the Miami Valley.” Ms. HudsonBanner continued, “Mercy Manor is proud that 68% of the women served are now living substance-free lives, employed and/or have received their GED and have permanent housing.”

Continued on Page 23

The Columbus & Dayton African American • April 2019

COMMUNITY

THE FIRST “SOCIAL JUSTICE AWARDS” ARE A GREAT SUCCESS

By Rev. Tim Ahrens, D.Min The first-ever Social Justice Awards were a great success!

Inspired by the vision of Mr. Terry Green, II, Founder and CEO of “Think, Make, Live, LLC,” 320 people packed the Boat House at Confluence Park on Friday, March 15th for the recognition of individuals and organizations in Central Ohio who are doing justice.

Social Justice awards were offered in a number of categories following the reception of over 300 nominations. Seven Individual and six organizational awards were presented in the following categories: Community Service; Education Advocacy in Public Schools and Higher Education; Law Enforcement, Legal Advocacy, Public Service and Restorative Justice.

The individual winners were: Michelle Heritage, Amara Leggett, Robert Gatti, Tresalyn Butler, Representative Bernadine Kent, Brian Woods, and Kathi Schear. The Organizational winners were: the BREAD Organization, Gahanna Lincoln High School Diaspora Program, OSU Urban GEMS Program, Bigs in Blue, Ohio CDC Association, and Clean Turn Enterprises.

Special Tribute Awards were presented to: Amber Evans (in absentia), Community Leader and Activist, People’s Justice Project; Michael Bivens, City Attorney, City of Whitehall, and the Washington Gladden Social Justice Park. More details about the individuals and the organizations can be found on the website: www.

SocialJusticeAwards.org. Sadly, just eight days after receiving her award and having been missing since late January, Ms. Amber Evans’ body was found in the Scioto River.

As I write, the city is grieving her tragic death and seeking justice for her and her loved ones.

Mr. Terry Green, II established the Social Justice Awards with the mission to empower and enlighten all minds to the success and achievements of Central Ohio’s Social Justice Leadership. His vision is to empower and enlighten all minds to the success and achievements of Central Ohio’s Social Justice Leadership.

Terry Green witnessed to his inspiration for the Social Justice Awards when he wrote: “Columbus made national history recently when the very first Social Justice Park was dedicated and opened up at the corner of East Broad Street and Cleveland Avenue.

The history of the park was the vision of First Congregational Church, an abolitionist and underground railroad congregation, who has been fighting for equal rights in Columbus since 1852. It is fitting that we as a community come together and celebrate those whose work and leadership in community service, public service, education, law enforcement, restorative justice, and legal advocacy to demonstrate their commitment to Justice for All.” Terry Green is an inspirational leader himself. Having survived homelessness at 15 and prison a few years later, Terry Green was educated by great mentors and professors at OSU and has risen to become a solution-driven consultant on social justice and one who offers innovative strategies and opportunities for youth and returning citizens to thrive in today’s society. In one of the most touching moments of the celebration, Mr. Green invited people on the stage who had been a part of changing his life and turning his life around. All present could see that the African Proverb, “it takes a village to raise a child” was coming true before our

eyes as the stage filled with Terry’s mentors, teachers and friends. He shared as award of gratitude with each one of them.

In my 30 years in Columbus, Ohio, I have never been in a room where police, political leaders, community leaders, teens who inspire us and offer leadership, black and white, rich and poor have been brought together to say “thank you” to such a wide range of leaders. Ms. Amara Leggett, Founder of a Young Legend, stole our hearts with her acceptance speech. She was in tears as she said, “I never imagined I would be standing here today to receive an award for social justice. I just try to help teens and for that I am honored? Wow!” It was Amara who is the “wow” as she dedicates her heart and soul to make a difference in this community as a volunteer and visionary. Columbus has many inspirational justice leaders – young and old.

All those present on March 15th were moved by their witness for justice and peace.

Rev. Dr. Tim Ahrens is the Senior Minister of First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ in downtown Columbus. A church known for its witness to social justice since its birth as an abolitionist congregation in 1852. Rev. Ahrens is the fifth consecutive senior minister from Yale Divinity School and is a lifelong member of the United Church of Christ.

To Advertise in The Columbus - Dayton African American contact us at: editor@columbusafricanamerican.com Ray Miller, 503 S. High StreetPublisher - Suite 102 750 East Long Street, Suite Columbus, OH 43215 3000 614-571-9340 Columbus, Ohio 43203 The Columbus African & Dayton African American • April 2019 American News Journal • February 2015

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COMMUNITY

LIBRARY HIRES LIVINGSTON BRANCH MANAGER manager of its Livingston Branch. She began Columbus Metropolitan Library has served her new role on March 25. the people of Franklin County, Ohio since 1873. With its Main Library and 22 Carter previously served as manager of the branches, CML is well known for signature West Indianapolis Branch of the Indianapolis services and programs like Homework Help Public Library, where she oversaw branch Centers, Reading Buddies, Summer Reading operations and served as outreach liaison Challenge and Ready for Kindergarten. The to area schools, community groups and library’s Strategic Plan supports the vision organizational boards, among other duties. of “a thriving community where wisdom “Tiffani’s resume really impressed us,” said prevails,” which positions CML to respond CML Chief Customer Experience Officer to areas of urgent need: kids unprepared for Alison Circle. “With her background in kindergarten, third grade reading proficiency, education and librarianship, we know she’ll high school graduation, college and career bring an immense passion for community readiness and employment resources. service to our Livingston Branch.”

CML was named a 2011 National Medal The previous manager of the Livingston Winner by the Institute for Museum and Branch, Nate Oliver, served on an interim Library Services for work in community basis while also managing operations at service, the highest honor for libraries and CML’s Gahanna Branch. With Carter’s COLUMBUS—Columbus Metropolitan hiring, Oliver will return his focus to museums. CML was also named 2010 Library of the Year by Library Journal.

Library (CML) has hired Tiffani Carter as Gahanna full time.

Continued from Page 21

“Mercy Manor is a guiding light for women facing great challenges and fears as they are released from prison, the homeless shelters, and drug treatment facilities. Women who are accepted into the Mercy Manor program begin to feel gratitude for the opportunity to focus on their drug recovery, consistent employment, successful re-entry into the community and reunification with their families,” Hudson-Banner concluded.

The results of those who have completed Mercy Manor’s six-month residential program shows that: 67% of the women moved to permanent housing.

75% of the women who obtain employment while at Mercy Manor remain employed.

52% of the women initiate their educational plan within four years, and 70% of the women remain clean and sober.

The organization presented major Community Service Awards to: The Sisters of the Precious Blood--received by Sister Cecilia Taphorn on behalf of the Congregation; The Reverend Father Benjamin E.K. Speare-Hardy II, Rector of St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church and his wife, Mrs. Stacy M. Thompson Speare-Hardy; and Bishop Dr. Marva Mitchell, Co-Founder, along with her late husband, of Revival Center Ministries International.

Ms. Letitia Perry, Anchor of WHIO-TV News Center 7, eloquently served as the Mistress of Ceremonies and Jenell Ross, President of Bob Ross Auto Group served as the Honorary Chairperson of the event.

Board Officers present were Saundra K. Collie, President; Joan Brown, VicePresident; Phillip Hinson, Treasurer; Jeffrey Steed, Jr., Assistant Treasurer; and Pam Hamby, Secretary; along with Board Members: Sophia Johnson, Rebecca Brown, Kathy Henry, Barbara Hayden, Jamesetta Lewis, and Retha Phillips.

The Keynote Speaker for the event was the Honorable Ray Miller, President & Publisher of The Columbus & Dayton African American and Former Member of the Ohio House of Representatives and the Ohio Senate for a combined 24 years.

Miller established the tone of his remarks with the words of a signature poem written

by Mari Evans (1923-2017) of Toledo, Ohio titled: “Speak The Truth To The People,” before further framing his presentation with “We Wear The Mask” penned by Dayton’s own highly accomplished poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906). Miller said, Truth is, heroin and opioid overdose deaths are now the leading cause of death for Ohio residents under the age of 55.

Truth is, Montgomery County, which the media has dubbed, “the overdose capital of America,” lost 800 people in 2017 to opioid overdose, more than any other city in the nation. With more than 10,000 opioid-related overdoses, Ohio had more opioid-related deaths than the entire country had in 2017.

Truth is, 3111 cases of domestic violence were filed in Montgomery County last year-1756 of those charges were brought by the Dayton Police Department.

Truth is, Ohio now incarcerates 49,255 inmates at a cost of $24,761 per year.

Truth is, the average daily cost to house, care, and treat a juvenile is $507.00 per day which equates to $185,055 per year.

Truth is, the United States is one of the top incarcerators of women in the world.

Between 1980 and 2016, the number of women incarcerated in American jails and prisons increased by more than 700 percent, from 26,378 in 1980 to 213,722 in 2016.

Truth is, the incarceration rate for African American women is twice the rate of imprisonment for white women.

Truth is, we have a place, a safe place called Mercy Manor, that provides shelter, healing, empowerment, and life skills to women who are in need of these critical services.

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And, truth is, we have a CEO of this great institution who is imminently qualified to help save the lives of the women who are fortunate to have found their way to Mercy Manor.

Miller said, “Recovery is a process of healing. Recovery is not achieved overnight.

It is indeed a journey, he said, and there is a formula for recovery which does, in fact, require a strong mind, body, and spirit. You cannot recover if you are covering up--if you are hiding the source of your pain, he said.

You cannot recover if you do not allow the healing to take place.

The healing from trauma, The healing from the painful memories, The healing from unsatisfactory answers given to very difficult questions, and The healing from being treated as a coconspirator in the horrific crimes and abuses perpetrated against you, Miller said.

Drawing his remarks to a close, Miller said, “Many people in this room have been broken-raped, molested, addicted, kicked out, worn out, abandoned, neglected, brutally abused, had their childhood taken away, their selfesteem stolen and self-confidence destroyed.

But how many of you know that “God Uses Broken Things.”

In closing his speech Miller candidly shared with the audience why he has championed certain issues and worked so hard to enact laws dealing with Alcohol and Drug Addiction, Mental Health, adolescent pregnancy, domestic violence, health care, employment, and business development. “If you see injustice, you have a responsibility to right the wrong being inflicted upon God’s people,” he said.

The program ended with an extensive presentation of Raffle Prizes and a commitment to generate even more financial resources to expand the services of Mercy Manor.

Ray Miller, III is the Assistant Editor and Graphic Designer for The Columbus & Dayton African American news journal.

The Columbus & DaytonNews African American • April 2015 2019 The Columbus African American Journal • February

EDUCATION

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING SCHOOLED AND BEING EDUCATED: IMPLICATIONS FOR A RELEVANT EDUCATION PROCESS

By Eric Johnson, PhD In any society few things are more important than the effort to school its young. In part, the schooling of the young represents the effort of a society to reproduce itself economically, socially, politically and in any other way instrumental for its perceived continued existence. However, far too often there is a misunderstanding of what it means to be schooled versus what it means to educate.

Schooling refers to a formal institutionalized process largely constructed and maintained by dominant cultures, around the world, that rationalizes their dominance to themselves and to other marginalized and exploited groups. The transfer of information in the formal schooling process directly and/or indirectly is fundamentally based on the goal of maintaining the status quo. In short, that means a subtle and not so subtle effort to maintain a social order, that keeps the same people at the top and the same people at the bottom. Given the access to information on social media, on-line, and intercultural communication, the dominants have had incredible success in maintaining a social order that works for them.

Education on the other hand is a process by which cultural information is transmitted to the young that invites the development of a healthy and wholistic sense of self.

Moreover, education is a process by which one is encouraged to discover a sense of purpose and meaning through consequential self-discovery. Young people are earnestly invited to examine the world and its affect and effect on people. In the education process young people are encouraged to develop the skills necessary to balance their spiritual, emotional, political and financial needs with what they believe is the greater good. They are invited to think critically about the health and balance of life and spirit with a sense of grace and mercy that compels a responsibility to leave more than they take. In this mode of education people are encouraged to understand conflict as opportunities to grow. As well as real world examples on how to understand and fulfill their needs and the needs of others. The education process is fundamentally driven to promote the understanding that we don’t know much more than we know and thereby continuously presenting opportunities to resolve difficult and sometime seemingly irreconcilable conflicts.

The difference between schooling and education are significant and relevant. As we send our children back to the schooling process let us be clear about the endeavor in which we are participating. There will be few opportunities for children to participate in consequential self-discovery or none at all and that will not be an accident. Children from marginalized communities around the world will be indoctrinated with a version of history that justifies the current social order. Sadly, many children with no other

cultural input of information will accept this narrative/play and will only seek to understand the role their character plays in the evitable result. Not to mention that many children’s self-discovery process will be replaced with an identification about how they are in some way a defect, not normal or just can’t learn like other kids. This too often results in a compromised sense of self that negatively impacts some kids for the rest of their lives. Some kids find other ways to combat this attack on their identity but too many of them are identified as behavioral problems because they lack the ability to articulate their complete awareness of the concerted effort to attack their humanity.

This battle for some kids lasts their entire schooling experience. Some kids manage to find a way to deflect the messages that could compromise their healthy development, but that number is too few. However, those that politically, emotionally, and physically survive the journey represent the best of their communities.

To be clear, this not an indictment of teachers because most them are well intentioned with a desire to help children in any way they can.

However, teachers are a complicated issue in that many of them have been informed by the cultural narrative we must fight against.

Too many teachers find truth and comfort in the social order and rather than critique it, they find it more useful to help young people traverse it. Teachers who critique the social order are themselves often under attack and working in a system that has diametrically opposing goals, while many of them fight the good fight they do so in a systemic process that is insidiously persistent. However, those teachers are not irrelevant, they provide kids they can with what they believe are the tools to make the changes they think are necessary.

Nevertheless, there are too few of them, too many students who fall victim and lack the support required to become the best version of themselves. Nonetheless, we need those teachers to continue their bravery often in the face of their own professional peril.

The Columbus & Dayton African American • April 2019

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In this complex and critically ubiquitous chronicle, the role of parents can not be overstated. While most parents have themselves fallen victim to the very process that threatens their children, they are not helpless in these circumstances. There is no special knowledge that parents need to possess to support their children. All parents must do is ensure that they invite their children to do meaningful and purposeful self-discovery. Parents are required only to operate with intentionality about what lasting effect they want to leave with their children.

It is not necessary for anyone to approve of what parents decide to culturally transmit to their children, but it is important that parents be deliberate about that transmission and account for their own growth needs in the process. None among us can live this life without mistakes, unutilized wisdom or regret, but we can ensure that we give the best version of ourselves to our children as often as possible and in that effort, we transmit to them the need to do same for themselves.

Every time we work to be a better version of ourselves deliberately with our children we provide them a reference guide to wholistic fulfillment. While the battle may at times seem overwhelming and unsurmountable, it is not. We need only to recognize things as they are and invite growth into our lives based on that assessment. There is an African Proverb that says: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Every single time we invite growth into our lives and we learn and teach our children the lessons, we take a bite. As we assess the difference between schooling and education, we give ourselves the opportunity to create a version of the world that responds to the needs of our children.

Dr. Eric L. Johnson currently serves as the Chief Consultant with Strategies to Succeed and he is on the faculty at Virginia International University. He is the former Chief of Research Publications for the United States Air Force Academy.

The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

EDUCATION

PAVING THE WAY

By Edward Bell, MBA The Columbus & Dayton African American sat down with Ricardo Felix who goes by Rico. At 18 years of age, Rico is an African American male who graduated from South High School with honors last summer and is now on a journey that will shape the rest of his life.

The journey of graduating high school is nothing new for thousands of youth across Ohio every year but it is what they accomplish after taking off the clapboard and tassels that will distinguish what they will become and the mark they will leave. Rico’s story is unique in its telling and awe-inspiring in its hearing. Like most kids growing up Rico day-dreamed of what life would be like in his future but unlike most kids, he knew what he wanted out of life and how he planned to get there.

We have all heard the horror stories of young African American men growing up without fathers in their lives and how it has often led to their taking a wrong path but Rico’s story is one of strength and perseverance.

Growing up poor herself, Rico’s mother, Leanne Felix wanted a better life for her family and worked hard to provide what she felt would give her three children (Rico, younger sister Leanna and older brother Antonio), a better chance of success. “Life was hard around our house,” stated Rico.

“We didn’t have everything we wanted but Mom ALWAYS made sure we had exactly what we needed, many times sacrificing her own needs.”

Aware of how some children lived in other neighborhoods, Rico never felt slighted or envious only vowing that one day, he would make enough money to take good care of his Mother and sister and that he would make them very proud of his attempts. Rico’s bother has set the bar high and provided Rico with a great visual by showing how to work hard, learn more and that applying oneself often leads to advancement. With that vision and concept in mind Rico emulated Antonio by working hard and earning the respect most people who have come into contact with him. It would be easy to end the story here and allow it to permeate the mind of the reader as just another success story; however Rico’s life story gets even more titillating in its telling as we learn Rico has joined other cadets at the famed and prestigious West Point Academy. Once he graduates from the Academy, he will become a Commissioned Officer earning the rank of 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Army.

Unlike other seniors deciding to go to a college of their choice and simply filling out applications, Rico’s journey to the Academy was not easy by any measure. Before a young

person can become a member of any service Academy they must first secure a letter of recommendation from at least one member of the United States Senate, who will then have staff due diligent research into the prospective candidate’s background: ascertaining; personality; family life; education levels; and extracurricular activities (among other things), to ensure the candidate is of upstanding character and would proudly serve our nation. Rico received a letter of recommendation from Rob Portman, United States Senator from Ohio. It should be pointed out the acceptance rate for candidates who have applied at West Point is 9% which means for every 100 applicants only 9 are actually admitted. Meeting the Grade Point Average (GPA) and SAT/ACT requirements is hard enough and only proves academic preparedness, convincing others of your worthiness makes the task daunting.

West Point requires candidates have a GPA of at least 3.74 and above average in all facets of high school. From middle through high school, Rico averaged a 4.0 GPA and all of his Teachers and Principals were astounding at his maturity and concepts of dedication and devotion.

It would be easy to end this story now and state what a remarkable young man and success Rico is but delving a bit deeper we see there is more to this story that makes it a true American success story. Each year the Gates Foundation using a highly selective process grants a full scholarship for exceptional, Pell Grant-eligible, minority, high school seniors. Starting in 2018, the scholarship will be awarded to 300 top student leaders each year with the intent of promoting their academic excellence through college graduation, and providing them the

The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

25

opportunity to reach their full potential.

To apply, students must be: • A high school senior • From at least one of the following ethnicities: African-American, American Indian/Alaska Native*, Asian & Pacific Islander American, and/or Hispanic American • Pell-eligible • A US citizen, national, or permanent resident • In good academic standing with a minimum cumulative weighted GPA of 3.3 on a 4.0 scale (or equivalent) Additionally, a student must plan to enroll full-time, in a four-year degree program, at a US accredited, not-for-profit, private or public college or university.

An ideal candidate will have: • An outstanding academic record in high school (in the top 10% of his/her graduating class) • Demonstrated leadership ability (e.g., as shown through participation in community service, extracurricular, or other activities) • Exceptional personal success skills (e.g., emotional maturity, motivation, perseverance, etc.)

In addition to meeting these stringent requirements Rico also submitted an essay attesting to his worthiness for this award.

Now firmly entrenched in the West Point way of life, Rico has stated it took a bit of an adjustment because in high school he was at the top of his class academically and known for his community volunteerism but now finds himself in a setting in which all the candidates were top of their classes and known for volunteering so he doesn’t stand out as much. He concludes with profound acuity that he will strive harder to be the best cadet he can for four years to become the best officer commissioned to lead cadets who will follow and to create a positive role model for other African American youth by showing hard work and drive do pay off as he continues to pave the way.

William Shakespeare once quoted, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them,” it would almost seem Shakespeare knew the world would have a Ricardo (Rico) Felix Edward Bell, MBA, AAMS, CMFC, CSS was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio and graduated with honors in a course, “Writing for Children,” from the Institute of Children’s Literature. He has served as Contributing Editor of the Autograph Times. He earned a Master’s degree, as well as designations as: Accredited Asset Management Specialist (AAMS); Chartered Mutual Fund Counselor (CMFC), and Certified Customer Service Specialist (CSS).

The Columbus & Dayton African American • April 2019

POLITICS LEGISLATIVE UPDATE

By Senator Charleta B. Tavares (Ret.) Governor Releases State 2-year Operating Budget – House and Senate Debate Transportation Budget The Governor unveiled his 2-year Operating Budget on March 15, 2019 to the public. The budget bill is being heard in the Ohio House of Representatives over the next couple of months followed by the Ohio Senate. Some of the recommendations included are: • $550 million for wrap-around services for school children at-risk • $200 million for new opioid initiatives focused on prevention and treatment • $148 million increase for children services agencies • Raises the minimum age for purchase of cigarette and other tobacco products from 18 to 21 years of age • Adds $47 million for economically needy students to pay for college (Ohio College Opportunity Grant) • Triples the funding for county public defender offices The House Finance Committee and its Subcommittees are streamed live and are taped for viewing on the ohiochannel.gov.

Governor DeWine released his 2020/21 Transportation Budget (House Bill 62) requesting an increase in the gas tax of 18 cents per/gallon and to adjust it annually with the consumer price index to ensure that sufficient funding continues. The revenue raised the first year with increasing the current 28-cent tax to 46 cents, would generate approximately $1.2 billion. The revenues would be split between the Ohio Department of Transportation and local governments. He also proposed $40 million for public transit.

The House of Representatives deliberated the Governor’s Transportation Budget and significantly decreased the proposed 28 cents to 10.7 cents over 2-years. In addition, the House increased the diesel fuel tax by 20 cents. The House also provided $100 million for public transit. However, the Ohio Senate further slashed the Governor’s gas tax increase to just 6 cents and reduced the House funding for public transit to $55 million.

House Bill 62 will now go to a Conference Committee to work out the differences between the Governor’s, House and Senate versions of the Transportation Budget to be finalized by March 31, 2019.

Ohio Legislative Black Caucus: Members Priorities

In an effort to bring the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus’ priorities and legislative agenda to the Columbus/Dayton African American news journals’ readers, we are highlighting each of the members* over the next several months. We will keep you informed on the progress of these and other bills sponsored and passed by the members of OLBC over the next two years of the 133rd General Assembly that specifically speak to the needs, opportunities and challenges facing Ohio’s African American and communities of color.

Rep. Glenn Holmes (D-Girard) 614.466.3488 1. HB 123- The SAVE Students Act - School Safety- suicide and violence prevention, threat protection plans, etc.

2. HB 84- Make private water/ sewer laterals eligible under the Capital Improvements Program 3. Injection Wells -Trumbull Co. currently has the highest amount of injection wells in the State. (132nd GA HB 723 and HB 578) 4. HCR 6- Encourage General Motors to keep Lordstown plant open Rep. Phil Robinson (D-Solon) 614.644.6041

budget obligations. Legislative policies regarding support for local government include: • Local government funding. Restore full funding for local government to benefit the region and the state.

• Address local infrastructure needs.

Advocate for repairs and reinvestment in infrastructure such as roads and bridge repair, public utilities, transportation, renewable energies, and statewide high-speed internet.

Grow Our Economy Policies have caused Ohio’s job growth to trail the national average for nearly half a decade. My legislative policies regarding growing the economy include: • Streamline process to start a business.

Create program to allow entrepreneurs to get all required permits in one day.

• Restore Consumer Sales Practices Act. Protect the well-being of workers by restoring the Consumer Sales Practices Act. Sen. Hearcel Craig (D – Columbus) 614.466.5131

• Infant Mortality- Ohio is currently leading the Investing in Education country in infant deaths.

This is a strong link to the The key to creating healthcare disparities that tomorrow’s leaders, Ohioans are experiencing. maintaining Currently Ohio’s infant mortality rate is neighborhoods, and slowly declining; however, the African attracting more people to our state is American infants are 2.3 times more likely education. My legislative policies regarding to pass away than Caucasian infants. I am education include: focused on creating policy that allows all infants a fair shot at life that is not dependent • Implement universal Pre-K. Provide on their zip code. all three- and four-year-olds in Ohio with access to optional, publicly-funded pre-K, of • Affordable Housing- Many health and social concerns start with adequate housing. a certain uniform standard for quality.

Unstable housing can lead to unemployment • Fix the school funding model. Fix the concerns and a decline in school success for unconstitutional school funding model for children. Furthermore, inadequate housing K-12 education. Also, look into restoring the can lead to additional or worsening health $820 million in school funding that was cut issues. By creating affordable and safe housing, we are building strong foundations since the Great Recession. for all Ohioans.

• Full day kindergarten. Offer state-funded • Fair Wages and Access to Opportunity- I full-day kindergarten. believe in creating ladders of opportunities for all Ohioans. Being paid a fair and Supporting Local Government livable wage will create a better quality of When a family decides which community life and less government dependency. I am to call home, they are looking to check off also looking into paid family leave. Life is key indicators. Great schools – check. Safe unexpected, and worry about a paycheck neighborhoods – check. Key city services, should not be problematic for a pregnancy, including trash pick up, snow removal, personal or family aliments. Access to fair assisting the elderly, community centers, wages and opportunity will strengthen our paving streets, etc. – check. They are not families and the neighborhoods they call looking to move to cities and towns struggling home.

Continued on Page 31 to provide basic services and meet standard

The Columbus & Dayton African American • April 2019

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The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

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The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

By Ray Miller Medical Apartheid - The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

Invisible Visits - Black Middle Class Women in The American Healthcare System

By Tina K. Sacks

By Harriet A. Washington

Although the United States spends almost one-fifth of all its resources funding healthcare, the American system continues to be dogged by persistent inequities in the treatment of racial and ethnic minorities and women. Invisible Visits analyzes how middle-class Black women navigate the complexities of dealing with doctors in this environment. It challenges the idea that race and gender discriminationparticularly in healthcare settings-is a thing of the past, and questions the persistent myth that discrimination only affects poor racial minorities. In so doing, the book expands our understanding of how Black middleclass women are treated when they go to the doctor, why they continue to face inequities in securing proper medical care, and what strategies they use to fight for the best treatment (as well as the consequential toll on their health).

The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed, Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. At last, it provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused black Americans to view researchers—and indeed the whole medical establishment— with such deep distrust. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read Medical Apartheid, a masterful book that will stir up both controversy and longneeded debate.

Afro-Vegan - Farm Fresh African, Carribean & Southern Flavors Remixed

By Bryant Terry

Black Pain - It Just Looks Like We’re Not Hurting

By Terrie M. Williams

In Afro-Vegan, renowned chef and food justice activist Bryant Terry reworks and remixes the favorite staples, ingredients, and classic dishes of the African Diaspora to present more than 100 wholly new, creative culinary combinations that will amaze vegans, vegetarians, and omnivores alike.

Accompanying the recipes are Terry’s insights about building community around food, along with suggested music tracks from around the world and book recommendations. For anyone interested in improving their wellbeing, Afro-Vegan’s groundbreaking recipes offer innovative, plant-based global cuisine that is fresh, healthy, and forges a new direction in vegan cooking.

Terrie Williams knows that Black people are hurting. She knows because she’s one of them. Terrie had made it: she had launched her own public relations company with such clients as Eddie Murphy and Johnnie Cochran. All the while suffering from depression.

Black Pain identifies emotional pain -- which uniquely and profoundly affects the Black experience -- as the root of lashing out through desperate acts of crime, violence, drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, workaholism, and addiction to shopping, gambling, and sex. Few realize these destructive acts are symptoms of our inner sorrow.

Black Pain encourages us to face the truth about the issue that plunges our spirits into darkness, so that we can step into the healing light.

Sweet Potato Soul - 100 Easy Vegan Recipies for the Southern Flavors of Smoke, Sugar, Spice and Soul

By Jenne Claiborne

The Heart of the Matter - Essential Advice for a Healthy Heart from Renowned Surgeons & Cardiologists

By Hilton M. Hudson II, MD, FACS; Karol E. Watson, MD, FACS; Richard Allen Williams, MD; Herbert Stern, PH.D.

Jenné Claiborne grew up in Atlanta eating classic Soul Food--fluffy biscuits, smoky sausage, Nana’s sweet potato pie--but thought she’d have to give all that up when she went vegan. As a chef, she instead spent years tweaking and experimenting to infuse plantbased, life-giving, glow-worthy foods with the flavor and depth that feeds the soul. The result? Her first cookbook, SWEET POTATO SOUL, offering 100 vegan recipes that riff on Southern cooking in surprising and delicious ways, beautifully illustrated with full-color photography. From decadent pound cakes and ginger-kissed fruit cobblers to collard greens, amazing crab cakes and the most comforting sweet potato pie you’ll ever taste, these better-than-the-original takes on craveworthy dishes are good for your health, heart, and soul.

This seminal work on heart disease in the African American community is updated with the latest information on nutrition and dietary guidelines, heart surgery, and medication in this revised edition. As important today as it was when originally published five years ago, this informative guide provides African Americans with the most cutting-edge information on cardiovascular disease, blood lipids, and strokes, the most current and successful medications and therapies on the market, and recent developments in understanding the role that spirituality plays in recovery. Preventative techniques that address the social and cultural dynamics that affect the health of African Americans are discussed, and more than 50 heart-healthy soul food recipes are included to ensure that African Americans get-and stay--on the healthy track.

29

The Columbus & DaytonNews African American • April 2015 2019 The Columbus African American Journal • February

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POLITICS Continued from Page 26

• Veterans- 866,000 Veterans reside in our state. We will be looking at legislation that honors their service by creating access to job training programs, quality education and affordable housing. * There are currently nineteen (19) members including one Asian American member participating in OLBC. For additional information on the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus, contact Chris Scott, Executive Director OLBC at cscott@ ohiolegislativeblackcaucus.org Reps. Crawley and Skindell Introduce Working Families First Tax Incentive House Bill 114 is an initiative that would reform Ohio’s Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to let more working families across the state keep more of the money they earn.

The Working Families First tax incentive would reform Ohio’s 2013 EITC law by removing the income cap and making the credit refundable for taxpayers. The bill could put hundreds of dollars on average back in the pockets of working Ohioans each year, money Skindell and Crawley say could go toward paying the bills, putting gas in the tank or saving for college.

“Working Families First gives hardworking people a fighting chance to get ahead and start saving for the future,” said Rep. Skindell.

“These commonsense reforms put money back in the pockets of those who need it by increasing opportunity for those negatively impacted by the state’s tax shifting in recent years.” Ohio’s current EITC remains capped and nonrefundable, meaning thousands of working families cannot realize the full income from their earnings.

“For too long, working families have had to tighten their belts while politicians in Columbus prioritized tax handouts for millionaires and billionaires. Working Families First flips the script, finally giving

Ohio Representative Erica Crawley - Columbus (Center), Ohio Representative Mike Skindell Cleveland (Left) and Ohio Representative Emilia Sykes - Akron (Right)

hardworking families a fair shake,” said Rep. Crawley. “This plan will not only benefit Ohio workers, it will also promote economic growth and job creation as Ohioans spend more at local businesses.”

and policy initiatives introduced, call or email your state Representative or Senator.

The committee schedules, full membership rosters and contact information for the Ohio House and Senate can be found at: www.ohiohouse.gov and www.ohiosenate. gov respectively. Former Senator Charleta B. Tavares will continue to host Quarterly Leadership Forums and send out the Tavares Times News monthly newsletter. To receive information on the Quarterly Leadership Forums and/or to receive the Tavares Time News, email tavarescrossfire2015@gmail. com.

The Working Families First incentive would align Ohio’s EITC program more closely with those in other states. “Currently, 95% of the lowest income Ohioans don’t benefit from the state EITC”, said Kalitha Williams, project director of Policy Matters Ohio.

“Now is the time to reform the credit and implement a proven strategy to help working families, reduce poverty, address tax fairness Former Sen. Charleta B. Tavares, and boost local economies.”

D-Columbus, is the 1st Democrat and African American woman to serve in the If you are interested in testifying on any Ohio House of Representatives and the Ohio of the bills introduced in either the House Senate from Franklin County. She is also or Senate, please contact the chair of the the first African American woman to serve in committee who can be found at www. leadership in the history of Ohio and the 1st ohiosenate.gov or www.ohr.gov.

Democrat woman to serve in leadership in both the Ohio House of Representatives and If you would like to receive updated the Ohio Senate (House Minority Whip and information on the Ohio General Assembly Senate Assistant Minority Leader)

The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

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The Columbus & Dayton African American • April 2019

POLITICS

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM AT ITS WORST

By Marian Wright Edelman On March 15, a terrorist carrying two semi-automatic weapons and three rifles attacked worshipers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 50 men, women, and children—some of them refugees who had fled war zones seeking safety. In the hours that followed nearly 70,000 New Zealanders signed petitions calling for gun control reform, and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern led the nation’s elected leaders in vowing to take swift action. On March 21, less than a week later, Prime Minister Ardern announced the introduction of a national ban on all military-style semiautomatic weapons and assault rifles, high-capacity ammunition magazines, and parts that allow weapons to be modified into semiautomatic guns, as well as provisions for a government funded buyback of existing assault weapons. In her announcement, she said, “I absolutely believe there will be a common view amongst New Zealanders—those who use guns for legitimate purposes, and those who have never touched one—that the time for the mass and easy availability of these weapons must end.”

That was leadership. As Nick Kristof wrote in a recent New York Times opinion piece: “Contrast that with the United States, where just since 1970, more Americans have died from guns (1.45 million, including murders, suicides and accidents) than died in all the wars in American history (1.4 million). More Americans die from guns every 10 weeks than died in the entire Afghanistan and Iraq wars combined, yet we still don’t have gun safety rules as rigorous as New Zealand’s even before the mosques were attacked.”

I have written about this question before: How have other countries responded after a gun massacre or mass shooting? In 1996, 35 people were killed and 23 others were wounded by a gunman at the Port Arthur tourist site in Tasmania, Australia, in one of the largest massacres ever committed by a single shooter at that time. Within twelve days of the shooting, spurred by strong public support, the Australian federal and state governments agreed to the historic National Firearms Agreement (NFA), which banned semi-automatic and pump action rifles and shotguns and required registration of all firearms, strict standards for gun licenses, and a permit for each gun purchase subject to a 28-day waiting period.

The NFA also prohibited private sales, regulated ammunition sales, and required licensees to receive firearm safety training and store firearms safely. To get banned rifles and shotguns off the streets, the federal government bought back or accepted turn-ins of over one million guns which were then destroyed. New Zealand’s proposed changes are based in part on Australia’s successful model. In the 18 years before the NFA there

were 13 mass shootings in Australia in which five or more people were killed. In the 23 years since there has been one.

Just weeks before the Port Arthur massacre in Australia, 16 five- and six-year-olds and their teacher were killed in a devastating school shooting in Dunblane, Scotland.

The shooter owned his guns legally and the outrage over his crime started a public campaign for tighter gun control culminating in a petition being handed to the government with over 700,000 signatures. A 1987 mass shooting by a man who killed 16 people and wounded 15 others had already led Great Britain to ban semi-automatic and pump action rifles and shotguns. This time, eleven months after the Dunblane murders, Great Britain passed the Firearm (Amendment) Act of 1997 instituting tighter controls over handguns. Soon after, the country went a step further and prohibited all handguns in civilian hands. The government also instituted firearm amnesties across the country resulting in the surrender of thousands of firearms and rounds of ammunition.

In 2015, six children and teens were killed by guns in the United Kingdom, which includes both Great Britain and Northern Ireland and had a total of 15.4 million children and teens. That same year in Texas, Florida, and Pennsylvania, with a similar combined population of 15.5 million children and teens, 495 children and teens were killed by guns.

What a difference guns make.

Some will argue that the United States is a very different place than Australia, Great Britain, or New Zealand, with entrenched attitudes equating guns with personal freedom, tens of millions more people, and tens of millions more guns, and we may never be able to expect the same success reducing the number of gun murders or mass shootings to near zero. This argument is not a valid reason to dismiss anything other countries are doing to act in favor of continuing to do nothing here. In all three of those countries extraordinary tragedies pushed a groundswell of citizens to stand up, say “no more,” and demand elected leaders take significant action.

If Americans had said no more in 1999 after Columbine, there may never have been a Virginia Tech. If we had said no more after Virginia Tech, there may never have been a Fort Hood. If we had said no more after Fort Hood, there may never have been an Aurora. If we had said no more after Aurora, there may never have been a Newtown. If we had said no more after Newtown, there may never have been a Charleston. If we had said no more after Charleston, there may never have been a San Bernardino. If we had said no more after San Bernardino, there may never have been an Orlando. If we had said no more after Orlando, there may never have been a Las Vegas. If we had said no more after Las Vegas, there may never have been a Sutherland Springs. If we had said no more after Sutherland Springs, there may never have been a Parkland. And if our leaders had

The Columbus & Dayton African American • April 2019

32

acted as swiftly as Prime Minister Ardern along with the groundswell of students, parents, faith leaders and others saying no more after Parkland, there may never have been a Pittsburgh and some of the tens of thousands of other American gun deaths each year might also have been prevented.

This is American “exceptionalism” at its very worst. When are Americans and our elected leaders going to say “no more?”

As we recognize and admire the noble response of leaders in in New Zealand to the horrific anti-Muslim massacre, we must redouble our efforts here at home to create a noble response from our leaders to children dying from guns and renew our commitment to Protect Children, Not Guns.

Ten Facts on Child Gun Deaths in America 1. Guns killed a child or teen in America every 2 hours and 48 minutes in 2017. That year 3,410 children and teens were killed by a gun—68 times the 50 slain in New Zealand.

2. U.S. child and teen gun deaths could have filled 170 classrooms of 20 children in 2017.

3. 2017 marked the greatest number of child and teen gun deaths since 1998. 282 more children died in 2017 than in 2016.

4. Guns killed more children under 5 than law enforcement officers in the line of duty.

93 preschoolers died from guns compared with 42 law enforcement officers in the line of duty.

5. 1,397 Black children and teens were killed by guns in 2017. Black children and teens were 41 percent of child and teen gun deaths, although only 14 percent of their peer population.

6. The gun death rate for Black children and teens was nearly four times that of White children and teens and more than 10 times that of Asian and Pacific Islander children and teens.

7. The majority of Black child and teen gun deaths were homicides; for White children and teens, the majority were suicides.

8. Between 1963-2017, 67,421 Black children and teens were killed by guns—nearly 17 times the number of recorded lynchings of all Black people in the 74 years between 18771950.

9. Since 1963, 3.5 times more children and teens died from guns on American soil than U.S. soldiers killed in the Vietnam, Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq wars abroad.

10. Our nation has more guns than people.

Although less than 5 percent of the global population, U.S. residents own nearly half (46 percent) of all civilian guns in the world—an estimated 393 million firearms.

Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children’s Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities.

For more information go to www. childrensdefense.org.

The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

POLITICS

CONCUSSION AWARENESS AND EDUCATION ACT WASHINGTON, D.C.—U.S. Congresswoman Joyce Beatty (OH-03) recently reintroduced the Concussion Awareness and Education Act, H.R. 280, a comprehensive, bipartisan bill to improve awareness, education, and research on concussive injuries in student athletes and military servicemembers in basic training.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 3.5 million concussions occur each year. Even more startling is the fact that 1 in 5 high school athletes will sustain a sports concussion—having far-reaching implications and increasing the risk of sustaining another concussion. Yet, there is no comprehensive system for acquiring data on the incidence of sports- and recreationrelated concussions across all age groups in sports, nor is there any published data on the incidence of reported concussions during basic training for military recruits.

“The Concussion Awareness and Education Act is a crucial piece of legislation aimed at protecting two groups at disproportionate risk of concussive injuries: our servicemembers and student athletes,” Beatty said. “There must be more coordination in the research and treatment of concussions, as well as on their

causes and risks. Bringing all stakeholders, coaches, parents, researchers, and lawmakers to the table will allow us to better address these types of injuries which affect millions each year.”

If enacted, H.R. 280 would direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), in coordination with the Secretary of Defense when applicable, to conduct systemic research on the treatment,

surveillance and prevention of concussion injuries. The bill would also establish the Concussion Research Commission to develop recommendations to address concussion research, surveillance, education, treatment and prevention. The Concussion Awareness and Education Act has 36 Democratic and Republican cosponsors collectively and is awaiting further consideration in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

HOW EARLY SUFFRAGISTS SOLD OUT BLACK WOMEN

By Becky Little New York City officials have revealed that in 2020, Central Park will get its first statues based on real-life women. The honorees are Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whose statues will mark the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, with which many women won the right to vote.

Though Central Park has a lot of statues of prominent men, all of the sculptures of women in the park currently represent mystical creatures or fictional women—like Mother Goose. The inclusion of two women who are not only real, but played a prominent role in the women’s suffrage movement, will likely draw a lot of praise.

Yet online, some are questioning whether Anthony and Stanton are the right pick. The reason has to do with their racial politics and their focus on white women’s suffrage over voting rights for all women.

Both Anthony and Stanton were at one time part of the American Equal Rights Association (AERA), a group they formed with Frederick Douglass and other activists in 1866. The organization’s goal was to win voting rights “for both women and African Americans,”says Lisa Tetrault, a history professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

“There’s tension from the very beginning over the priority of those two demands,” she says. “Black women fall out of this equation.”

During the AERA’s founding convention, black suffragist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

addressed how this framing was unhelpful for her and other black women. “[Harriet Tubman], whose courage and bravery won a recognition from our army and from every black man in the land, is excluded from every thoroughfare of travel,” Harper said. “Talk of giving women the ballot-box? Go on.”

After only three years, the AERA dissolved over heated fights about whether to support the 15th Amendment, with which black men won the right to vote (in the South, this victory would be short-lived). At a pivotal convention in May 1869, Douglass argued that the AERA should support the amendment while continuing to fight for women’s suffrage. Stanton not only disagreed, she gave an address filed with racist stereotypes about the male immigrants and male former slaves whom the amendment would enfranchise.

“Think of Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung, who do not know the difference between a monarchy and a republic, who cannot read the Declaration of Independence or Webster’s spelling book, making laws for … Susan B. Anthony,” she said at the convention. “[The amendment] creates an antagonism everywhere between educated, refined women and the lower orders of men, especially in the South.”

Both Douglass and Stanton had previously attended the Seneca Falls Convention for women’s rights in 1848. According to Tetrault, “what’s particularly painful was that Douglass had been the one at Seneca Falls who stood up and defended women’s right to vote. And then when it comes to the 15th Amendment, Stanton refuses to reciprocate.”

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The disagreements at that convention led not only to the dissolution of AERA, but a split in the women’s suffrage movement between those who supported the 15th Amendment and those who did not. Stanton and Anthony joined the faction that did not; and after the amendment passed, many of the suffragists on that side pandered to white southerners by arguing that that if white women could vote, they could drown out the black male vote.

Anthony also sought to distance her work from Douglass, who continued to support women’s suffrage for the rest of his life. During an 1890s suffrage meeting in Atlanta, she asked him not to appear onstage with white women because it would seem inappropriate. However, these racist strategies ultimately proved ineffective because southern white men were already preventing black men from voting with discriminatory poll taxes, tests, and lynching.

Both Anthony and Stanton died more than a decade before the 19th Amendment passed.

And although their work was instrumental in making that passage possible, they did not work to prioritize making voting rights accessible to all women. In 1920, black women in the south and many Latinas in the southwest were still barred from voting because of racist voting restrictions. And when they tried to reach out to the main suffrage organizations at the time, they were ignored.

“They say basically, ‘Help us, we still can’t vote,’” Tetrault explains. “And those organizations basically say, ‘That’s a race question, it doesn’t concern us.’”

Article from www.history.com

The Columbus & DaytonNews African American • April 2015 2019 The Columbus African American Journal • February

BUSINESS BOND MARKET BASIS governments will often consider their debt non-taxable for residents. Therefore, making some municipal bonds completely tax free, which is sometimes called triple-tax free.

By Darren Lundy, MBA Long before there were corporations that issued shares of stock for investment, there was the systematic use of debt to raise money.

Debt involves borrowing money with the promise to pay it back in full, along with interest over time. The guaranty assuring that promise is known as a bond. In other words, bonds represent debt obligations.

Bonds have been around for thousands of years. The ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur, in what is modern day Iraq, had a bond market around 2400 B.C., guaranteeing repayment for borrowed grain. Kings often borrowed by issuing bonds to fund wars and territorial expansion, as well as democratic governments later. In modern times governments still borrow to undertake projects, but there is also a thriving market for bonds issued by corporations that borrow for expanding profitable undertakings. For example, a company may borrow in order to acquire a competitor, to build a new factory, or to hire personnel.

The bond market does not get nearly as much attention among most investors as the stock market, as most people are lured by the opportunity to see their investments skyrocket in value over the long run. Although the bond market typically does not offer as many chances for investors to earn double-digit returns, it nevertheless plays a vital role in balancing investment portfolios and helping people keep money available for short-term needs. Many investors neglect this segment of the financial markets, but it is an important part of your portfolio.

The bond market encompasses three primary markets: The Treasury bond market, the corporate bond market, and the municipal bond market. The bond market is much larger than the stock market. In the U.S., bond markets make up almost $40 trillion in value compared to less than $20 trillion for the domestic stock market.

Governments, corporations and municipalities issue bonds when they need capital. An investor who buys a government bond is lending the government money. If an investor buys a corporate bond, the investor is lending the corporation money. Like a loan, a bond pays interest periodically and repays the principal at a stated time, known as maturity.

Unlike equity markets, where the buyer owns a piece of the given company in perpetuity, bond markets require the borrower to return the money to the lender at a pre-agreed point in the future.

Government bonds- can be issued by national governments as well as lower levels

Bonds should still play a critical role within a diversified portfolio.

Don’t give up on high quality bonds!

When stocks are taking a beating on Wall Street these bonds tend to hold their value.

The most recent example came during the market meltdown of 2008 and 2009. Adding bonds to a portfolio helps diversify and can provide stability for equity holdings that will get battered during inevitable stock market turmoil. You want a lot of different assets on your plate. of government. At the national or federal level, these government bonds are known as “sovereign” debt and are backed by the ability of a nation to tax its’ citizens and to print currency. In the U.S. federal debt is classified according to its maturity. “Bills” are bonds maturing in less than one year, “Notes” between one and ten years, and “Bonds” maturing in more than ten years. Marketable securities from the U.S. government - known collectively as “Treasuries” - follow this guideline and are issued as Treasury bonds, Treasury notes and Treasury bills (T-bills).

All debt issued by the U.S. government is regarded as extremely safe, often referred to as “risk-free” securities, as is the debt of many stable countries.

Negative bond returns are rare.

While there is a lot of chatter today about a bond market “bubble,” bond market losses historically have been less severe and less frequent.

Since 1973, for example, intermediate-term bonds have experienced just one negativereturn year (1994, total return of -1.9%), compared to nine negative years for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (lowest return was -37% in 2008).

Even though bonds do not get as much media attention as stocks does not mean they are not extremely important in a well-diversified portfolio. More importantly, bonds can help reduce stock market volatility and provide a Corporate bonds- the other major issuer steady income stream. of bonds are corporations. Corporate bonds make up a large portion of the overall bond G i v e u s a c a l l f o r a c o m p l i m e n t a r y market. Large corporations have a great consultation. deal of flexibility as to how much debt they can issue; the limit is generally whatever the market will bear. A corporate bond is Join Darren for a Free Seminar: considered short-term corporate when the maturity is less than five years, intermediate Thursday, April 18, 2019 Money is five to 12 years, and long-term is over 12 Consciousness - “Women, Money, and years. Corporate bonds are characterized Power Seminar” by higher yields than government securities because there is a higher risk of a company Location: Westerville Public Library Address: 126 S State St, Westerville, OH defaulting than a government.

43081 - Meeting Room B However, a corporate bondholder has Time: 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM preferential status over common and preferred Admission: Free stockholders in certain circumstances. Prior RSVP: 614-776-4311, Email: darren@ to paying dividends to its’ shareholders, a money-consciousness.com corporation must first pay interest to their bondholders. Therefore, there is relatively Darren is a Columbus, Ohio native who has less risk to investing in bonds as compared earned degrees in Business, Accounting, and an MBA. He has over twenty-five (25) to stocks. years’ experience in financial services. The Municipal bonds- also known as “munis” Ohio Company, First Union Securities, and are bonds issued by state, local governments, Merrill Lynch were instrumental in his career or by government agencies. These bonds are prior to starting his own Wealth Management typically riskier than national government Firm, Money Consciousness LLC, (614) bonds; cities don’t go bankrupt that often, 776-4311. He holds his Series 65 and Life but it can happen (for example in Detroit and Health licenses. Investment advisory and Stockton, CA). The major advantage to services are offered through Foundations munis for investors is that the returns are free Advisors, LLC an SEC registered investment from federal tax. Furthermore, state and local advisor.

The Columbus & Dayton African American • April 2019

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The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

BUSINESS

MEDICAL TECHNOLOGIES: ROBOTICS, TELEMEDICINE AND DATA ANALYTICS

By Cecil Jones, MBA Have you walked through a hospital lately? Are you scheduled for a medical procedure with a specialist? What tools does a young doctor in her/his first year after completing residency have to help treat you? Have you used any of the online tools available to send a message to your doctor, schedule appointments or reorder prescriptions?

Many of the above involve Robotics, Telemedicine and Data Analytics in medicine.

Robotics Robotics is used every day in manufacturing.

One usage is when that 200 pound part is delivered to a factory dock, a robot can pick it up from the receiving dock, place it in inventory stock and alert the inventory system that the part was placed in its stock bin. This reduces strain on humans and drives efficiency.

Another usage is when a robotic device paints a car in an enclosed room, avoiding a human from doing the painting and inhaling toxic fumes. This improves human health and drives efficiency.

In medical surgery, robotics are used for some procedures. The surgeon controls these instruments and the camera from a console located in the operating room near the patient or can even in another city or state. The expertise of experienced doctors in a remote city can be utilized in a local small town near you, improving the chances for improved health for the patient (https://med.nyu.edu/ robotic-surgery/physicians/what-roboticsurgery). The doctor is able to operate all four arms of the robotic surgery using tools like the Da Vinci process. Simultaneously, the doctor looks through a stereoscopic highdefinition monitor that visually places the doctor inside the patient, giving the doctor a better, more detailed three dimensional, 360 degree view of the operating site than even the human eye could provide.

You heard about the patient who received news from a doctor in another state via a computer monitor that the patient’s condition was terminal and that little could be done https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/10/health/ patient-dies-robot-doctor/index.html. This is not good, humane usage of technology.

Whether we are discussing robotics, telemedicine or data analytics, no matter what the data says, human compassion, humane communication, and humane treatment influences what we do with data and diagnoses, at all times.

talking about the classic usage of robotics that most of us know. There is another term used in software development called ‘robot’. That robot is a set of software rules that execute over and over again – in this article, we are not talking about those software robots.

increasingly with the aid of specialized systems and software. In medicine, data analytics allows your doctor to examine the research data from the conditions of many, many other patients and help determine the treatment for your specific condition. All doctors, including the ones just beginning Telemedicine their careers, rely upon medical data analytics (https://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.

There is a local group of African-American com/definition/data-analytics). entrepreneurs that are developing a holistic telehealth service and are bringing their next What new technology, processes and devices set of features to market soon. One of their are you using? focuses is on patients having their medical records from all sources available in one Help Us to Help You location that the patient can access and share that information when and how they want.

The purpose of this column is to provide useful information and knowledge that you If you want to know more about telemedicine, can use, today. If you have a technology some sites to visit are: question (how to get something done, what business, process or software solution might  https://mhealthintelligence.com/features/ be available for your situation, how to secure is-there-a-difference-between-telemedicine- that technology position, etc.), please email and-telehealth describes these health support the question or comment to the email address features.

Admin@Accelerationservices.net for a quick response.  -http://ohiotelehealthinitiative.org/aboutoti/ People, Process and Technology Data Analytics in Medicine

All doctors are researchers. That is part of their training and focus, in order to bring the latest and greatest medical solutions to you. Many hospitals are also medical research facilities that heavily rely on Data Analytics. Doctors, hospitals and the medical practice rely on Data Analytics. What is Data Analytics? Data Analytics is the process of examining data in order to draw conclusions When we discussed robotics above, we were about the information/data they contain,

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Are you looking for a technology networking group to help you get smarter? What new technology or process have you learned this month? Need advice on how to look for that technology position? Are you considering technology education (courses, certificates or degrees) and need information? Do you have a business, process, project management, personnel or technology question? Please let me know. admin@accelerationservices.net Cecil Jones MBA, ABD, PMP, CCP, SCPM, FLMI, Lean Professional, 614-726-1925.

The Columbus & DaytonNews African American • April 2015 2019 The Columbus African American Journal • February

HISTORY

BERNICE I. SUMLIN: 19TH INTERNATIONAL PRESIDENT OF ALPHA KAPPA ALPHA SORORITY, INC.

By Rodney Blount, Jr., MA March marks Women’s History Month in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, corroborating with International Women’s Day on March 8. Like Black history, I believe Women’s history should be celebrated 365 days a year and I am glad to write about the many accomplishments of the countless heroines throughout our history. A common theme that I write about is women who have overcome many obstacles to get to the road of success. They defied the challenges of sexism, racism and often classism to become distinguished in their vocations and activities.

In addition to being distinguished in their careers, most of the women I write about also were the anchors of their homes as wives and mothers and/or had a special interest in our youth. Furthermore, many of the women I have researched have found solace in sisterhood through their family units, church/religious experience, organizations and sororities. Bernice I. Sumlin embodied all of the attributes of a successful woman who excelled in all of her endeavors. She was a proud Dayton native who went on to serve at the helm of one of the largest sororities in the nation and beyond, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. Bernice Irene Sumlin was born on November 29, 1926, in Dayton, Ohio, to Wright R. and Gussie Bingham Sumlin. She grew up in a loving home and had one brother, Oliver.

Growing up, Sumlin recalled Dayton being a segregated city. Bernice was educated in the public schools where she attended Weaver Elementary School and graduated from Paul Laurence Dunbar High School.

At Dunbar High School, she was involved with theatre and developed her oratorical skills. She graduated from Central State University with a Bachelor of Science in business and secondary education in 1948.

Sumlin had attended Wilberforce University for three years and was part of the inaugural graduating class from Central State following its separation from Wilberforce University into two separate institutions. While in Wilberforce, she had the chance to know and work with such luminaries as Hallie Q. Brown and Charles H. Wesley. Ms. Sumlin earned a Master of Arts in 1951 at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Ms. Sumlin was a staunch proponent of education, literacy and business serving as a high school business teacher and guidance counselor at her alma mater, Paul Laurence Dunbar High School. She was also a school administrator and an independent financial consultant. She helped to develop the Vocational Education Exploratory program for Wright-Patterson Air Force Base high school students and was an organizer for the NAACP. She was also a former VicePresident of the National Council of Negro

Bernice I. Sumlin (right) with Soror Coretta Scott King.

Women and a lifelong member of Wayman Chapel A.M.E. Church.

Bernice Sumlin was initiated into the Zeta Chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., at Wilberforce University in 1946. She served as International First Supreme AntiBasileus (Vice-President, 1972-1974), Great Lakes Regional Director (1962-1966), and International Standards Committee Chairman, among other leadership positions. She was a member of Beta Eta Omega Chapter in Dayton, Ohio and served as its president in 1958.

In 1974, Sumlin was elected the 19th Supreme Basileus (International President) of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. Sumlin’s administration donated $25,000 to Central State University for the restoration of the Hallie Q. Brown Collection of rare books by and about blacks, which had been damaged by a tornado. On October 25, 1974, Sumlin answered a challenge given by retiring Executive Director Carey B. Preston and initiated the Alpha Kappa Alpha Reading Experience, a national program offering individualized tutoring to undereducated inner-city youth. During her tenure, the sorority donated more than $500,000 to the United Negro College Fund, helping to spur the launch of its Parade of Stars annual telethon in 1979. The telethon raised more than $156 million over 19 years in its original telethon format.

In 1975, at the invitation of President and Mrs. Gerald Ford, Sumlin represented the Sorority at a reception held at the White House launching the International Women’s Year Conference. Later, she represented the Sorority at the International Women’s Year Conference in Mexico, City. In addition, Sumlin’s administration saw the installation of the Sorority’s Founders’ Window at Howard University in Rankin Chapel.

She also began the recognition of sorority members with twenty-five years of service as Silver Sorors and those with fifty years of service as Golden Sorors.

Sumlin was a presenter at the Fourth African American Summit in Harare, Zimbabwe, in 1997, and attended the 1999 Summit in Ghana. Her involvement in civic, educational

The Columbus African & Dayton African American - April 2019 American News Journal • February 2015

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and professional services has brought her many awards and citations, including an honorary Doctorate of Humanities from Central State University. She has also been cited for outstanding service by the National Council of Negro Women, the Continental Society, the A.M.E. church and Outstanding Women of Dayton.

Bernice Sumlin passed away on January 11, 2018. She was preceded in death by her parents and beloved brother. Her older brother, Oliver, was a veteran, Department of Defense official, and a leader in several fraternal organizations.1 Bernice Sumlin was honored in November 12, 2017, with the placement of historical markers on the Wilberforce and Central State campuses, and the establishment of an endowed scholarship at Wilberforce University by Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. Sumlin was a lifelong resident of Dayton and lived every moment to the fullest. Remembering her Dayton roots, Sumlin said, “when they elected me, everybody said, “We never heard of national presidents coming out of Dayton, Ohio.”

I said, “Well, you got one now.” And we laughed about that, you know. I said, “Little old Dayton had …established the planes for the United States of America.” I said, “The Wright brothers [Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright] are from Dayton, Ohio.” And they said, “What?” I said, “The Wright brothers who established the planes that you fly on are from Dayton, Ohio.” And I said, “And that’s where I’m from.” Bernice Sumlin will be missed, but her legacy will live on through the thousands of lives she touched and made better.

Works Cited https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/ bernice-irene-sumlin-41 https://hbcudigest.com/central-statesbernice-sumlin-former-aka-internationalpresident-and-hbcu-advocate-dies/ https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/ dayton/obituary.aspx?n=bernicesumlin&pid=187859748&fhid=5700 Jet Magazine (June 3, 1976) www.wilberforce.edu/ Footnotes 1 I had the pleasure of meeting with the late Oliver Sumlin and his wife, Mary, on two occasions. They graciously provided a lot of information concerning his leadership in government, as Ohio District Director of Alpha Phi Alpha, Deputy of the Orient of Ohio (PHA Scottish Rite Masons) and in Sigma Pi Phi. Rodney Blount is an Educator and Historian.

He received two Bachelor of Arts degrees from Ball State University and a Masters of Arts degree from The Ohio State University. His work has been featured in several publications. Rodney is a native of Columbus, Ohio and is a member of several organizations.

COMMUNITYEVENTS Columbus, Ohio April 6, 2019 Public Health Diversity Summit The 7th Annual Diversity in Public Health Summit will focus on the issues of HIV/AIDS Crisis, Health Equity, Addiction Disorders and Maternal Mortality. Lunch will be served following the concluding remarks.

Location: The James Comprehensive Cancer Center, Room L035 Address: 460 W. 10th Ave. 43026 Time: 8:30 AM – Noon Admission: Free Contact: www.eventbrite.com/e/7th-annual-diversity-summit April 9, 2019 Health Education Event Columbus Public Health, Office of Minority Health is sponsoring a one-day community health education event providing information on STIs, exercise, nutrition, alcohol, drug abuse, depression/anxiety, and stress reduction techniques.

Location: Otterbein University Campus Center Address: 100 W. Home Street 43081 Time: 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM Admission: Free Contact: Ryan Johnson, MPH 614-645-7335 April 11, 2019 Community Conversation Franklin County Board of Commissioners, Franklin County Department of Job and Family Services, Franklin County Children Services, and Capital Behavioral Health will host a community conversation about children of incarcerated parents and the challenges they experience. Join in the community conversation to share your viewpoints and hear from community members and a panel of Franklin County leaders.

Location: Huntington Empowerment Center Address: 788 Mount Vernon Avenue 43203 Time: 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM Admission: Free Contact: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/children-ofincarcerated-parents-community-conversation-tickets59236847004?aff=ebdssbdestsearch#listing-organizer April 12, 2019 Sankofa 2019: Celebration of Leadership The annual signature event of Columbus Africentric Early College PK-12 recognizes the contributions of AfricanAmericans living and working or emerging from the Greater Columbus Area. Experience Music, Dance, and Art Work from the Diaspora as we recognize the contributions of African-Americans to benefit the global community! This year’s honorees include: Bishop Timothy J. Clarke, Quinn Caper, M.D., Chenelle Jones, Ph.D., and others. Come dressed in your Sunday’s best or your Cultural Garments.

Location: Columbus Africentric Early College Address: 3223 Allegheny Ave 43209 Time: 6:00 PM – 8:45 PM Admission: Free Contact: 614-365-8675 or 614-365-6517

The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

April 13, 2019 Baby Supply Drive The National Pan-Hellenic Council of Columbus and Celebrate One is hosting a community service event at the Driving Park Recreation Center. Each Divine Nine Alumni chapter will provide various baby supplies such as diapers and shampoo. On the day of the event, 75 families will have the opportunity to enter the room (one at a time) and shop for the needs of their baby, the goal is to equip each family with a basket of supplies. The neighborhood of Driving Park is a priority neighborhood where infant mortality is high. The event will also have a Safe Sleep Training.

Location: Driving Park Recreation Center Address: 1100 Rhoads Avenue 43206 Time: 8:00 AM – 9:00 AM (item drop-0ff); 9:00 AM Safe Sleep Training Admission: Free Contact: 614-645-1717 April 23, 2019 My Brother’s Keeper Black History & Culture 2019 presents: 400 An Afrikan Epic by the Mark Lomax Trio. Included on the program are student essays and poems honoring Rev. Dr. martin Luther King Jr. Heavy appetizers provided by Berwick Catering.

Donations accepted to benefit the MBK Mentoring Program.

Location: St. Charles Preparatory Address: 2010 E. Broad Street 43209 Time: 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM Admission: Free Contact: Michael Warner mwarner@scprep.org April 27, 2019 Spring Networking and Community Day The Brotherhood Laymen’s Auxiliary of Shiloh Baptist Church presents, Celebration of the Neighborhood, Spring Networking Breakfast & Community Family Day at the King Arts Complex.

The day will begin with the 13th Annual Ministers, Community Servant Leaders and Business Professionals Breakfast and move into family FunShop featuring individual vision board crafting and art creation for youth ages 8-14. Select community organizations and businesses will have display tables and provide information about their purpose, services and outreach. Hamburgers, coneys, salads, snack items and beverages vended by the Brotherhood Laymen of Shiloh will be available for purchase.

Location: King Arts Complex Address: 867 Mount Vernon Avenue 43203 Time: 8:00 AM – 9:30 AM breakfast; 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM community family day Admission: $20 for breakfast; community family day free Contact: Shiloh.baptist1869@gmail.com April 27, 2019 Book Fair The Bridges Book Club in partnership with the King Arts Complex presents the Bridges Book Fair. Bring the whole family out to meet local and national authors and other literary professionals, purchase autographed books for both children and adults, and learn more about becoming an author and sharing your story. For more information call, 614-565-7315.

Location: The King Arts Complex Address: 867 Mt. Vernon Ave, 43203 Time: Noon - 4:00 PM Admission: Free Contact: www.eventbrite.com/e/bridges-book-club

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The Columbus & Dayton African American - April 2019

COMMUNITYEVENTS Dayton, Ohio April 6, 2019 Health Fair JustUs Healthy, Wellness & Beauty Fair is a free event for the whole family. Come join us for Healthy for the Culture: a health fair with SWAG! Consult with local healthcare professionals, get blood pressure checks and A1c screenings, plenty of vendors, healthy food, line dancing, fitness demonstrations, giveaways and much more. Be sure not to miss out!

Location: Central State University Dayton Address: 840 Germantown Street 45402 Time: Noon – 4:00 PM Admission: Free Contact: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/health-wellnessbeauty-fair-tickets-56438185131?aff=ebdssbdestsearch#listi ng-organizer April 9, 2019 Author Presentation The Community Action Agency proudly welcomes author Ibram X. Kendi as he presents on, “How Racism is Defined in America Today”. Ibram X. Kendi is the National Book Awardwinning author of Stamped From The Beginning: A Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Kendi’s lectures are sharp, informative, and hopeful, serving as a strong platform for any institution’s discussions on racial discrimination.

Location: Community Action Agency/Cincinnati-Hamilton County Address: 1740 Langdon Farm Road, Cincinnati 45237 Time: 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM Admission: Free Contact: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-breakfastconversation-with-ibram-x-kendi-tickets-58671368643?aff=eb dssbdestsearch#listing-organizer April 13, 2019 Soul of the Arts Concert Nothing says soul to the region like our amazing arts.

ArtsWave Days 2019: Soul of the Arts invites you to live soul music and everything that forms it – jazz, R&B, gospel and doo-wop – through six amazing performances packed in two unique concerts. For more information, visit the link below.

Location: School for Creative & Performing Arts Address: 108 W. Central Parkway 45202 Time: 4:00 PM - 8:00 PM Admission: Free Contact: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/artswave-days-2019soul-of-the-arts-tickets-55533381840?aff=ebdssbdestsearch#lis ting-organizer

April 18, 2019 Civil Rights and the Blues Join us for a moderated discussion entitled, “Freedom 55: Music Moved the Movement, Civil Rights and the Blues” with Bobby Rush, Marquise Knox and National Underground Railroad Freedom Center’s Deputy Director, Jacqueline Dace. The discussion will focus on the societal conditions in place prior to, and during the Civil Rights Movement. It will connect how blues artists that grew up within a segregated culture began to express themselves through this musical genre. This program is free and open to the public. RVSPs are required.

Location: National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Address: 50 East Freedom Way, Cincinnati 45202 Time: 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM Admission: Free Contact: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/freedom-55-musicmoved-the-movement-civil-rights-and-the-blues-discussionwith-bobby-rush-and-tickets-57273411315?aff=ebdssbdestsearch #listing-organizer April 19, 2019 Faith & Race: A Conversation St. Peter’s United Church of Christ invites the public to a Good Friday Lecture & Discussion on White Supremacy & Black Liberation – One Faith and Two Experiences. This lecture by Pastor Derek Terry compares the experiences of white and black Christians in America. White Supremacists used their Christian faith to support their efforts; Black Christians used their Christian faith to survive the terror of White Supremacy. One faith; two experiences. For more information, visit the link below.

Location: St. Peter’s United Church of Christ Address: 6120 Ridge Avenue, Cincinnati 45213 Time: 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM Admission: Free Contact: www.eventbrite.com/e/good-friday-lecturediscussion-white-supremacy-black-liberation-one-faith-and-twoexperiences-tickets-58927887899?aff=ebdssbdestsearch#listi ng-organizer April 23, 2019 Mental Health First Aid Workshop Mental Health First Aid teaches you how to identify, understand and respond to signs of mental illnesses and substance use disorders. This 8-hour training gives you the skills you need to reach out and provide initial support to someone who may be developing a mental health or substance use problem and help connect them to appropriate care. Participants will receive a three-year certification and CEUs are available. This event is sponsored by the Montgomery County ADAMHS. Location: Montgomery County ADAMHS Address: 409 E. Monument Avenue 45402 Time: 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Admission: Free Contact: 937-443-0416; www.mcadamhs.org

Please note: Information for this section is gathered from multiple commnuity sources. The Columbus & Dayton African American is not responsible for the accuracy and content of information. Times, dates and locations are subject to change. If you have an event that you would like to feature in this section, please email us at editor@columbusafricanamerican.com. Submissions are due the last Friday of each month.

The Columbus African & Dayton African American • April 2019 American News Journal • February 2015

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The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

There is no routine mammogram.

When it comes to mammograms, routine just isn’t enough. That’s because routine applies only to what’s predictable, straightforward and logical. And breast cancer simply isn’t. At The James, our radiologists read only mammograms, all day, every day. They’re trained to detect the nuances that people who don’t read mammograms all day might miss. It’s that level of expertise that results in prevention, detection and peace of mind that are far beyond routine.

Don’t get a routine mammogram. Get a James mammogram.

To schedule yours, call 800-240-4477 or visit cancer.osu.edu/mammo.

James No Routine Mammo_ColAfAm_10.25x14.5.indd 1

2/15/19 11:22 AM

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The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015