METRO
NEW PITTSBURGH COURIER
SEPTEMBER 22-28, 2021
A5
Report: Overdose death rate ‘significantly higher’ for Blacks in Allegheny County OVERDOSE FROM A1
nificantly higher” than White residents, “thereby deepening racial inequity,” and that Black men experienced a “200 percent increase” in overdose deaths from the third quarter of 2019 to the second quarter of 2020, compared to Q3 of 2018 to Q2 of 2019. Across Pennsylvania, officials were alarmed to the fact that Black overdose deaths jumped 63 percent from 2018 to 2020; for Whites, it increased just five percent. “Limited access to medical resources to treat opioid use disorder, combined with inadequate community infrastructure—including unreliable transportation, food and housing insecurity, and insufficient insurance coverage—have all contributed to the disproportionate rise in opioid overdose
deaths among Black people in the U.S.,” said, William Soares, M.D., the director of harm reduction services and an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School Baystate in Springfield, in an article published in the online publication Everyday Health. “If you are a Black American and you have an opioid use disorder, you are much less likely to be prescribed medications for opioid use disorder,” added Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, in a National Public Radio report. Dr. Edwin Chapman has been a specialist in drug addiction in Washington, D.C., for decades. As an African American, he has been on the forefront of alerting the public that what once was
a White, suburban problem that has the attention of Congress has become a Black, inner-city problem that no one wants to discuss. “Sometimes we’ll have a cluster of folks outside selling drugs,” Dr. Chapman said in a WAMU (Washington, D.C.) radio report in 2018, referring to the Medical Home Development Group building he leads in D.C. “We’ve had overdoses right outside, right under the building, right next door to the building.” “People who’ve even been lifelong heroin users are dying because they don’t understand how to titrate those doses,” added Dr. Melissa Clarke in the WAMU report. “That’s a huge part of the challenge. It’s always been impossible for addicts to know the potency of street drugs, but with
fentanyl in the mix, they’re even more dangerous now. “We feel like we have a fire underneath us—people are dying every day.” And in St. Louis, Mo., the Courier has learned that Black men are now four times more likely than White men to die of an overdose, after Black overdose deaths increased by 33 percent in 2020. Dr. Cook, a 1984 Allderdice High School graduate who earned his M.D. from Drexel University in Philadelphia in 1998, is one of the leading African American doctors in the region specializing in addiction medicine and recovery. He’s now the medical director at Recovery Centers of America—Monroeville, which has 138 beds available for inpatient services and also offers outpatient services. He and the center’s CEO,
Michael Ogden, told the Courier they are adamant about getting more African Americans into treatment. Ogden said African Americans “deserve the same level of care of anybody else in America.” Ogden also said that oftentimes, regular private insurance covers the cost of regular treatment at Recovery Centers of America and elsewhere, debunking the myth that professional addiction treatment is too costly. For those without insurance, some outpatient services are covered by Medicaid, and there are community health centers across the region that offer low-cost addiction treatment. Dr. Cook said that when it comes to addiction, there is a perception that Black people just have to “deal with it,” rather than getting
professional help that their White counterparts are often afforded. “We believe we should pray about everything, go to the pastor, which is wonderful because that is a component of recovery,” Dr. Cook, himself a minister before becoming a physician, told the Courier exclusively. “But we have to do more than that. We also sweep things under the rug. When I was a kid, instead of saying, Uncle Bob’s in jail, they’ll say he went down south. Well, Uncle Bob was down south for like five years. He wasn’t down south, he was in jail. We need to start talking about problems, not sweeping it under the rug. Certainly leaning on spirituality, but not making it the only thing.”
Honor a person lost to gun violence with ‘Remembrance Object,’ Sept. 24-26 by Rob Taylor Jr. Courier Staff Writer
Reverend Glenn Grayson Sr., pastor of Wesley Center AME Zion in the Hill District, is leading efforts to remember those lost to gun violence in the Pittsburgh area on a national level. From Friday, Sept. 24 through Sunday Sept. 26, from 2 to 7 p.m. at the Center That C.A.R.E.S., 2701 Centre Ave. (same location as the church), anyone who has lost a family member to gun violence can contribute a “remembrance object” in their memory, which will be placed inside a small box and sent to the growing National Gun Violence Memorial in Washington,
D.C. Reverend Grayson’s son, Jeron, 18, was killed by gun violence while at a party near California University of Pennsylvania in 2010. He was a former star athlete at Schenley High School and a student at Hampton University at the time of the shooting. Goldette Shields, a member of Wesley Center AME Zion church who is also assisting with the promotion of the event, lost a nephew, Frederick Shields, to gun violence three years ago. “Guns are supposed to be for self-defense, and now people are just trigger-happy and they’re destroying our communities,” Shields told the New
Pittsburgh Courier. “There’s nobody playing in the playground anymore because they’re scared they’re going to be shot by a drive-by, or because ‘we won a game,’ or ‘you stepped on my foot.’ The violence is killing our youth. Our youth really think it’s cool to go around and shoot somebody because they’re angry at them or they’re mad, or they had a bad day.” Whether it’s the pandemic or otherwise, Pittsburgh is dealing with an increase in homicides in 2021, along with many parts of the country. Shields said that it’s important for people to remember their loved ones by bringing an object that will be permanently REV. GLENN GRAYSON SR., pastor of Wesley Center AME Zion in placed at the new memorial in D.C. the Hill District.