Agenda - 05-18-2004-7a - Laserfiche WebLink

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9 and other adverse health conditions that exist among specific population groups in the United States",. The ECHO (Ethnicity, Culture and Health Outcomes) program grew out of faculty discussions between the Schools of Medicine and Public Health at UNC starting in the fall of 2001. They identified the need for a central unit to better align their institutional resources to address health disparities through a variety of research and community outreach projects. The mission of ECHO is to eliminate health outcome disparities through transferable, evidence-based research, multidisciplinary training and education, and culturally sensitive service to North Carolina communities. An ECHO project of specific interest to Orange County is one called "MANN (Men as Health Navigators), being conducted by the University in conjunction with the United Voices of Efland Cheeks. This project will engage African-American and Latino men in Orange, Wake, and Chatham County in a peer network for improving systems of care around chronic disease, such as prostate cancer, Ms. Pullen-Smith offered a "reality check" for the overall discussion of minorities and healthcare. "That reality check is that one of the strongest risk factors for having poor health is having low wealth, no wealth, on the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder, living in poverty, orjust being 'po'." She said that African-Americans in North Carolina are nearly 3 times as likely as whites to live in poverty, have higher rates of no health insurance, and report being unable to see a doctor in the last twelve months. One other particularly chilling statistic she shared was that African-Americans are 1.3 times more likely to die from AIDS than whites. In .Tanuary 200.3 the North Carolina Office of Minority Health & Health Disparities published its "Report Card" on the state ofAfrican-American health. The Report Card, she said, served a number of goals. It provided baseline information on disparities between whites and minorities in the state; it translated health status data into useful ratios (2 times, 3 times, etc.); and it created a monitoring tool for the state in working to eliminate disparities. Ms. Pullen-Smith thought it important to focus on understanding the health experiences of those living in our communities by developing coalitions of agencies, administrators, and policy makers who could get at the heart and pulse of those community needs and interests.. "I hold the premise that minority health is everybody's business ... "It's going to take everybody working towm•ds a common vision, Doctors, lawyers, teachers, preachers, mental health workers, business and industry, everybody .. churches and state agencies working with you to address this issue, " "Statistically, the numbers are out of sync ", began Mr. Faribault in reference to African-Arnerieans. "We have more cardiovascular° conditions that include heart attaclrs, strokes, and complications thereof like kidney faihu°e. We have more diabetes, more cancer, and more prostate cancer than arty otlrer° minority. We have more eye disease mtd more obesity. "