Panelists lined up Thursday evening and gave examples and opinions on how minorities could turn around the health gap in America. The panelists were part of the Minority Health Symposium sponsored by the Jackson-Madison County NAACP at Jackson-Madison County General Hospital.
The symposium addressed health issues many minority groups face, but the topic of conversation centered on African Americans throughout the evening.
There are many reasons why minorities, including African Americans, have a gap in coverage and overall health compared to the rest of the country. Several of the reasons, including mistrust of the health system, mistreatment by the system, lack of access to care and generations of poverty could not be fixed in one symposium.
The panelists agreed the number one issue that could be fixed, however, was the lack of education in the community.
If people are not well educated they don’t know their options, and they don’t know how to access preventative measures and screenings, and suffer because of it, according to Joseph Fouche, an oncologist at the Jackson Clinic.
“The problem is, whenever you talk about prevention and screening the very first thing that’s important is you got to actually have the patient in the clinic to screen,” Fouche said.
Panelist Winston Perkins said the community needs to educated by one of the most powerful entities — the church. Spiritual and physical health are linked, he said.
“There are over 200 churches in Jackson,” Perkins said. “It is a shame, before the Lord God almighty, that our people aren’t educated as much as they should be.”
People need to know where to go for help, how to get health insurance and how to cook healthy foods on a budget, he said.
“Not only from a spiritual perspective, people deserve to live happier and deserve to live longer,” Perkins said. “If there’s any sense of hope, we need to see the faith-based communities rise up and say, ‘Listen, enough is enough.'”
Stephen Colliers, internal medicine doctor at the Jackson Clinic, said while the problem is certainly within the African American community, people of all races are suffering and dying from lack of knowledge.
“It’s not possible to have a healthy America without having a healthy community of all races and people,” he said.
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