photo by steed media service

The declining numbers of Americans with adequate health care often goes unnoticed when the “have-nots” include African Americans and other people of color. However, there’s an ever-widening disparity in health care access between poor minorities and middle-to-upper-class white Americans. Dr. Philip Coleman, VITAS director of Hospice Education for the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, is working to change that.

“Unless we find a way to address it and deal more openly with health issues, it will continue to persist and in time get worse. It’s [nothing] short of a state of emergency,” he says of the state of health care. “We need to get more people involved in the issue of health disparities. One of the biggest barriers is awareness and education.”

Building better awareness in the community, Coleman purports, is the first step toward bridging the gap. An offering more African Americans need to be aware of is hospice care.

“Hospice is a special form of care to help support patients and families dealing with terminal disease. It’s a relatively young form of health care in our country, but it represents a movement to allow persons to receive the support that they need to experience death with dignity,” Coleman explains. “Black people underutilize hospice and other health services in relation to white Americans. What most [people] don’t [know] is that hospice is covered 100 percent by Medicare and Medicaid.” Coleman is especially excited about Rainbow/PUSH’s national hospice outreach effort.

“We’ll be coordinating this effort on a national scale and begin to focus more specifically on other health issues like cancer, HIV/AIDS, diabetes and other chronic illnesses,” he says. –todd williams

For more information, call 773-FREEDOM.

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