Before moving here in 1998, Dr. Carolyn Clark served as a physician in the United States Air Force. Last year marked a quarter-century since she began treating Roanoke Valley patients at her group practice, now in southwestern Roanoke County.
Recently, the internal medicine specialist told a short story about Clark, whose name he cannot reveal due to privacy laws.
The African-American woman, then in her 60s, came to the clinic in 2016 and told Dr. Clark that her gynecologist had moved from Roanoke two years earlier and that she had not seen an OB-GYN since.
Clark asked her patients for regular mammograms and also performed breast exams. Lo and behold, the doctor discovered a lump. So Clark changed the patient’s order to a diagnostic mammogram rather than a screening test. A biopsy later revealed that she had breast cancer at a treatable stage.
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The patient continued to receive drug therapy, tumor removal, and radiation therapy. To her delight, Clark said the woman had a “great response”. “To date, she has shown no signs of breast cancer. And she continues to follow up regularly for office visits.”
This story is a testament to the power of preventive medicine. Doctors can successfully treat many diseases, even scary diagnoses like cancer, if they are caught early and the patient is relatively healthy.
Dr. Carolyn Clark is an internal medicine specialist with the Roanoke County Virginia Medical Association. She is chairing the Black Family Wellness Expo at Pilgrim Baptist Church, a March 16 event sponsored by the Roanoke Chapter of Lynx.
Dan Casey
The problem is that such stories are far too rare, especially for Black patients. When selecting health conditions that are treatable, such as diabetes and high blood pressure, African Americans have higher mortality rates and are more likely to die younger than whites, Hispanics, and Asians.
There are myriad reasons, Clark said. Just one thing: African Americans, as a group, are not avid consumers of preventive medications.
Clark and local members of a service organization known as The Links want to change that. On Saturday morning, March 16, the Roanoke Valley Chapter of The Links will sponsor a Black Family Wellness Expo at a northwest Roanoke church. Clark is the event’s chairman.
The Black Professional Women’s Organization has 17,000 members in 299 chapters in 41 U.S. states and three countries. This includes the United Kingdom and the Bahamas.
The group boasts that its members collectively contribute more than 1 million hours of documented service annually. The news release states that The Lynx is “committed to enriching, preserving and ensuring the cultural and economic survival of African Americans and other peoples of African descent.”
The four-hour expo, to be held on March 16, is “an effort to reduce health and economic disparities and save and improve the lives of members of the Roanoke Valley’s Black community,” a news release said. There is. (It focuses on marginalized communities, but doesn’t turn anyone away.)
According to KFF (formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation), some of the health disparities for Black Americans are severe. A few years ago, the magazine published an article titled “How Recognizing Black Health Disparities Is Important for Change.”
Some statistics cited here are:
Life expectancy for Black Americans at birth was less than 71 years in 2021. The average life expectancy for white people is expected to be just over 76 years.
In 2021, 11% of Black people under 65 did not have health insurance. The percentage of white people in the same age group who were uninsured was 7%. That’s a big difference.
In the United States in 2020, the white infant mortality rate was 4.4 deaths per 1,000 live births. For Hispanic babies he was 4.7 and for Asian babies it was 3.1. The mortality rate for black infants is 10.6 per 1,000 live births, more than twice the mortality rate for white and Hispanic infants and more than three times the mortality rate for Asian infants.
Clark said that on average, black Americans are more likely to have high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, kidney disease and many types of cancer. And also from the secondary effects of not treating these symptoms early enough.
Consider glaucoma, a non-fatal but leading cause of blindness. People of African descent suffer from primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) at three times the rate of people of European descent.
Initially, there are no obvious symptoms of POAG, but if detected early, it is highly treatable. Age-wise, black people tend to develop the problem about 10 years younger than other groups. This means that vision is lost and the problem is often not discovered until it becomes severe. And by that time, treatment becomes even more difficult.
Finding and treating people who are currently unaware of such illnesses is one of the goals of the March 16 expo, which is open to all ages.
Health conditions covered include immunizations, heart health, breast cancer awareness, diabetes and chronic disease management, stroke prevention, blood pressure, weight loss, maternal health, exercise, and more.
Clark said the best exercise is 150 minutes of brisk walking a week (basically 30 minutes a day, five days a week). She added that it’s healthier than running.
Even better, walking doesn’t require an investment in equipment or a health club membership. For Black Americans, finances are often a barrier to preventative health care.
The expo doesn’t just focus on physical health exams. It will provide education on dentistry and mental health, as well as resources for caregivers. Some exhibitors focus on financial health. Lack of funding is often a barrier to people receiving appropriate preventive care.
The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) will also participate. My friend Shannon Abel and his wife Kit will help participants learn how to avoid getting caught up in computer and other types of scams.
Please check it. Screening tests can reveal health conditions such as high cholesterol or high blood sugar that can be easily treated to improve longevity and quality of life.
