Voices for Health Equality

Bronx Health REACH is a coalition of 40 community-and faith-based organizations founded in 1999 that is focused on eliminating racial and ethnic health disparities in the southwest Bronx. As part of its community education effort, the coalition produced a video, titled Voices for Health Equality, which depicts the reality of health disparities from the perspective of both community members and healthcare professionals. The video is an effective tool for sharing the coalition's goals and introducing the problem of racial disparities to community leaders and policy makers. Doctor came out. She told him what happened; I told him. He asked me who my doctor was and went back in the door and left me standing there. Nobody said anything. One of the things it seems to me you learn as a black professional is that as long as you are in your professional clothing, or you're in a particular place, you may be treated in a particular way. However, when you go to the emergency room or when you are in contact with certain kinds of elements of our society and you are regarded just as a person of color, the treatment is very different. So what happened at this hospital was that once I got there and took off my professional clothing and I was like everybody else, I stayed there for hours—this is one of the best hospitals here in the Bronx. I was in the emergency room for 24 hours. You know, we did some focus groups when we first started this project. And if you could hear the stories of the people who sat in those groups, when you ask them certain questions about how do they feel, you know, when they go to a doctor, what kind of treatment do they get, what would they like to see different, what's going on. Most people, originally—some of them, many of them—didn't even understand that they were not getting the kind of treatment that they are supposed to get. The consequence of not having the information for the clients that we see at Neighborhood SHOPP, primarily Hispanic and African American elders, is death at an earlier age or increased functional incapacity as a result of the impact of the illness over the course of their life. During the years, I learned some good things and I also The opinions expressed by authors contributing to this journal do not …