 |
|
photo by steed media service
|
Founder and CEO, The Diabetic Amputation Prevention Foundation
African American communities often deal with health disparities that
affect black males, but very seldom do these neighborhoods have a
medical professional solely committed to reversing the trend. As the
founder and CEO of The Diabetic Amputation Prevention Foundation, Dr.
Bill Releford Jr. has been a champion for his Los Angeles community by
educating men about the many risk factors they face. As one of the
primary doctors involved in the first annual Los Angeles Black
Barbershop Health Outreach Program, Releford coordinated with 22
black-owned barbershops in the Los Angeles area to stress the message
that one’s wealth is dependent upon one’s health.
“The most important thing to understand is that everybody wants
to be rich and everybody wants to be wealthy but your health is the
number one prerequisite for accessing wealth. Now is the time for
African Americans to take their own health care and get information
into their own hands. Our goal is to utilize the existing
infrastructure of black-owned barbershops with the dissemination of
health information for the benefit of African American health,”
explains Dr. Releford.
Health stations were established in the barbershops involved in the
program and manned with medical professionals testing black males for
hypertension and diabetes. Dr. Releford insists that the starting point
for a healthy generation of black men begins with the food choices they
make on a daily basis. “Many of our patients who live the longest
eat five colors every day. Something red, something green, something
purple, something yellow [and] something white. These are the
vegetables that many of us don’t get a chance to eat; so we
believe that the elimination of fast foods from your diet will help
tremendously,” he says. –jason thompson
