Charles T. Folsom Jr. brings over 35 years of healthcare experience to the conversation about heart health in the African American community. As a registered nurse at Emory Healthcare’s emergency department and the Founder & CEO of eLife Technologies, Folsom combines clinical expertise with technological innovation to address critical health disparities. With advanced degrees in nursing and healthcare management, along with certifications in project management and change management, he’s uniquely positioned to discuss both the medical realities and technological solutions for improved heart health outcomes.
What do you do professionally?
I am a registered nurse of 37 years. I work at Emory Healthcare in the emergency department, and we’re a stroke center and a heart center in the Metropolitan Atlanta area. And we see approximately 200 patients a day.
Tell us about your product
Our product is called Elife Health Summary, and it allows patients to be able to have all of their information on their phone. Whether it’s an apple device or android device as well as wearables like you’ll see the wristband that I have. We have cards, we have magnets, and we partner with assisted living facilities to provide services for their patients. But it’s basically a pre-hospital care, so that all your medications, allergies, and any other previous hospitalizations, and all your medical information is available at the time of care.
How can technology help destigmatize healthcare for African Americans?
We’ve got to get out of the consuming perspective. And we’ve got to get back to the engineering perspective. And that’s what we see a lot in the schools now, especially the stem schools and some of the charter schools. But our public schools. We’ve got some of the brightest minds in the country. They just have to be exposed to the product.
So quickly. We’re partnering with Fort Valley State University to be able to have their team. It’s called Fab. They collaborated with MIT to develop apps and different technologies in HBCUs. And I’m going to tell you the kids that they have at Fort Valley State are absolutely mind blowing smart.
So we know we have the ability to do the work. It’s just a matter of being exposed to it. And looking at the engineering part of a product versus just being entertained. And part of that’s the social media and other things that kind of, get into our lives and make us, get distracted. But we’re so focusing on being entertained and laughing and joking that we don’t look at man. This is a cool product. I wonder how I could make it myself.
Can wellness become “cool” again?
There’s a gigantic opportunity there to be able to make healthy, wellness popular which we’re doing now. I’ve done a few lectures recently did one at House of Hope, and I did one with Georgia Hymns Association a couple weeks ago, and we were talking about the need for better understanding, cardiovascular health, and the things that put us in bad situations with it. And we talk about this triage of diseases, diabetes, hypertension and kidney disease, all kind of being correlated. But heart disease is also one of the major factors.
And it’s very simple terms that you can use to be able to make people understand that there are real consequences to your actions when it comes to your heart health.
For instance, I spoke the other day, and I told the lady I said, Listen, when your blood sugar is elevated, your body does not make nitrous oxide nitrous oxide makes your vessels dilate and relax. So basically, your heart is tense all the time. And if your sugar’s up, your blood pressure’s up.
Your blood viscosity changes so just, real, simple, practical terms. So, people can understand that these diseases are not just terms. They have real physical effects on your body.
What misconceptions exist about heart health in the African American community?
The technology. For instance, Dexacom is one of the most popular items on the market right now, and people put their dexacom on, and it gives them a constant reading of their blood sugar every 5 min, or even more frequently, but it gives you a constant reading of your blood glucose level.
That would be the perfect start for those patients in the African American community who are diabetic, and we make up a vast majority of diabetics in the United States.
So, if we just start with getting our sugars under control and understanding that processed foods and things like that are really detrimental to our bodies is basically your body fighting against the diet that you eat.
And it causes tons of inflammation and other symptoms that you see, that would be the first. That would be one of the 1st markers. Get your get your blood glucose under control and monitor your blood pressure.
What practical steps can people take to improve their heart health?
When patients buy wearables. I sit down with them and I tell them, hey, listen! What is the real objective of you getting this wearable is for you to know a certain number. And then what are your actions going to be when you receive that number? Do you understand? We call them KPIs or metrics. But do you understand what that number means to you as an individual? And then do you develop a strategy to improve that number. And do you know what those numbers mean in real context, for instance, your low density lipoproteins? That’s your horrible cholesterol.
And if you eat a lot of saturated fat, and you eat and your blood sugar is out of control. Those are the major contributors to you, developing plaques in your heart, giving you a heart attack, having to get stents and all that type of thing. But then, a lot of times in our community, we say, well, if we had had a heart attack. We think our heart is healthy. That is absolutely the most untrue thing in the world.
More people, probably more people get congestive heart failure than have heart attacks, and that comes from high blood pressure over long periods of time.
So, giving them the basic understanding of what the physiology is. And then when they introduce the product, do they know what they’re looking for as an outcome from that wearable device, or that technology that they’re integrating into their lives.
How can technology help with heart health despite privacy concerns?
One of the things that I think is a big help for us is using, like, for instance, not the advertisement. But Apple watch is really useful. It can give you. They got a couple of apps on there that can give you your trended heart rate, and that’s one of the things that I talked to people about. Your heart rate should really not be all over the place. That’s one of the reasons why you exercise to get your heart rate up that way. When you rest, your heart rate’s lower and your heart works more efficiently right.
The apple watch gives you that information, and they got, some applications on there that can kind of tell you. Hey? You’re really tired, or you’re not resting good because we’re looking at variations in your heart rate, or even if you’re getting your blood pressure, is your blood pressure all over the place, and you’ve got to figure out why.
And one of the things the main issue in your body that controls your blood pressure is your kidneys. These are the types of things that technology that should prompt you to look and go well, hey? If my blood pressure is all over the place, do I need to get my kidneys checked, or at least get some lab work like creatinine or BUN to look and see what my numbers are to see if I’m actually filtering the blood that I have? Or are my kidneys giving me problems that’s causing my blood pressure to be.
What message do you have for African American men about heart health?
You’ve got to follow up with your PCP. You’ve got to be involved with your if you need a cardiologist, you need to get a cardiologist. Anybody over 40, something years old should get a baseline. EKG, if you’re over 50 should be getting EKGs every year in my book.
Just to see if you’re having any issues, or the EKG. Will be able to show if you’ve had any interruptions in your electrical conductivity of your heart. Heart healthy diet. You need to understand the mechanisms of the diet, but the biggest thing is to understand how those plaques form, and that’s one of the things that people do not understand. For instance, I worked in a Cath lab one time, and I remember the doctor showing me a heart. And I was like, what are those little plastic straw looking type things in that heart that looks crazy? And they were yellow and yucky looking he goes. Oh, that’s margarine!
And then our research and margarine’s like one molecule away from being plastic.
How does epigenetics affect heart health in African Americans?
It’s a huge factor. I had a 29 year old female that came in. She was maybe 5 foot 6, weight 135 pounds. Non-smoker, no alcohol. Vegan had a stroke, her blood pressure was 220 over a hundred 50, and didn’t realize she had a stroke. She just felt a little funny.
In perfect health, and had a stroke. So we know it’s not, she exercised. She doesn’t smoke, she doesn’t drink no drug use. When they bring her in. They’ll say, hypertension, etiology unknown. Which means they don’t know the cause of it, but it’s primary hypertension. And it’s coming from somewhere, and I guarantee you when you look when I talk to her and we look back. Her mama had it, her grandmother had it, her great-great-grandmother had it.
