Most of us find the barbershop a place to interact within the community talking about sports, debate politics and swap old time stories. The barbershop has always been more than a place where you can get a good trim or shave. This is what Dr. Joseph Ravenell capitalized on. He used the place to promote and improve public health of African American men.
Dr. Ravenell, an assistant professor of population health and medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center, is using the trust men have in their local barber to improve their health as reported in Huffington Post. Funded by the National Institutes of Health, his Men's Health Initiatives program was rolled out in 69 barbershops across New York City between 2009 and 2014.
"Often there is a wait for the barber, particularly for the really good barbers," Dr. Ravenell said. While men wait to get their hair cut, his team grabs this opportunity to offer free blood-pressures screenings and medical advice. "Once they sit down in the chair to get their blood pressure measured, it's a perfect entree to talk about not only cardiovascular disease, but also colon cancer and now organ donation," Dr. Ravenell added.
Dr. Ravenell and his team have screened 10,000 barbershop customers in the course of five years. They also offered those with high-blood pressure to enrol in six-month study. These participants are given nutrition program to follow, exercise and smoking cessation advice in person and over the phone. These are done to lower the participant's blood pressure in the next six months.
Among the study's 731 participants, blood pressure dropped by 5 points on average, over the six-month period. "If the entire population were to achieve that kind of blood-pressure drop, we would reduce stroke risk by about 30 percent," Dr. Ravenell said. "We're talking about a potentially major public health impact."
This initiative is not entire new. Last Saturday, September 12, a group of medical students together with its community partners Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity and the George Biddle Kelley Foundation held its first-ever barbershop health clinic in Albany as reported in Times Union. Similarly, Dr. Anthony Reid spearheaded a study to test if early barbershop intervention can produce positive results in African American men as reported in The Atlantic last year.
