Research Guides: Black History Month: Black Health & Wellness (2022)

Black Health & Wellness

Campus Resources

Crisis Resources and Support
Don’t wait to ask for help. Lone Star College and our surrounding communities offer services to support your well-being in times of need.
Campus Health, Safety, and Risk-Management Awareness (CHSRMA) Online Modules
Lone Star College is committed to its mission to provide comprehensive educational opportunities and programs to enrich lives. An essential component in fulfilling this mission is to create a safe and supportive learning environment for all students.
Drug and Alcohol Abuse Prevention Program (DAAPP)
As part of the commitment to the provision of high quality and effective service to our students, employees and the public, LSC has a drug and alcohol abuse prevention program in operation. The program is accessible to all members of the college community.

Suicide Prevention & Mental Health Resources

African American Health Coalition
The Coalition promotes healthy lifestyles and healthy communities. Programs target financial assistance, health disparities, info sharing meetings and volunteer opportunities.
National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)
This page of NAMI is focused on the Black community and the effects of racism, discrimination and inequity on mental health.
Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC)
Use registry to find resources and interventions for suicide and mental health based on specific populations.
Tri-County Behavioral Healthcare
Tri-County Behavioral Healthcare provides supportive mental health services for adults and children. Services include an Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) program, crisis response, and veterans services.

Books from the Shelves

I Did a New Thing by Tabitha Brown
ISBN: 9780063286115
Published: 2024-01-30
Years ago, Tabitha Brown started "I Did a New Thing!" The challenge was simple. Try one new thing, every single day, for thirty days. Brown presents an inspirational guide for encouraging positive changes in your life--one day and one challenge at a time.

E-Books

Black Women's Mental Health

Using a multi-disciplinary approach, this book covers issues related to Black women's struggle for inner peace and mental stability.

Reclaiming Our Health

African Americans are affected by serious diseases and health conditions at far greater rates than other Americans. Authors offer advice on navigating the health care system and reclaiming health.

Black Mental Health: Patients, Providers, and Systems

Examines the role of African Americans from perspectives of black patients and black health professions within American psychiatric health care.

Promoting Health and Wellness in Underserved Communities

Examines the healthcare industry as a part of a larger social structure affecting the life and health of under-served communities.

The Racial Divide in American Medicine: Black Physicians and the Struggle for Justice in Health Care

Documents the struggle for equity in health and health care by African Americans in Mississippi and the United States in a examination of social justice in health care.

Health Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Helps the reader understand key social justice issues relevant to health disparities and/or health equity, taking the reader from the classroom to the real world to implement new solutions.

The Wrong Complexion for Protection

Beginning with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, this book examines the government response to natural and human-induced disasters over the past eight decades.

Videos

In Sickness and in Wealth
What are the connections between healthy bodies, healthy bank accounts and skin colour? Our opening episode travels to Louisville, Kentucky, not to explore whether medical care cures us, but to see why we get sick in the first place, and why patterns of health and illness reflect underlying patterns of class and racial inequities.
Until the Well Runs Dry: Medicine and the Exploitation of Black Bodies
The practice of disinterring cadavers (grave robbing or bodysnatching) for purposes of medical dissection was widespread in the 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States. This documentary chronicles the history of this nefarious practice and its relationship to contemporary attitudes of African Americans towards medicine.
Diagnosis and Assessment with African Americans
In this presentation from the 2013 MSU Symposium on Multicultural Psychology, Dr. Nicole Buchanan discusses cultural differences and biases, how they can impact clinical assessments of African Americans, and how to improve cross-cultural psychology.
Now Is Our Time: Healthy Living for Black Women 40-55
In America, black women have statistically high incidences of certain illnesses and conditions. In this program hosted by dancer/celebrity Debbie Allen, several black women talk about their midlife health concerns, while two doctors and a diabetes educator discuss the importance of monitoring for diabetes, heart disease, and cancer; the pros and cons of hormone replacement therapy; and other topics, including the importance of a healthy lifestyle.

Mental Health

Trevor Noah Discusses Mental Health Stigma in Black Community (6:45)

More...Stories, Articles, Books

Public Health

U.S. Life Expectancy Plunged in 2020, Especially for Black and Hispanic Americans
The 18-month drop, the steepest decline since World War II, was fueled by the coronavirus pandemic.
#Blackgirlsrun: Promoting Health and Wellness Outcomes Using Social Media
This paper presents the case of Black Girls RUN! (BGR), an Atlanta-based organization and social movement with a grassroots and community-driven approach to changing fitness-related ideology and health outcomes within the Black community. Using an interdisciplinary approach built upon tenets of media studies, cultural studies, Black Feminist Thought, and health promotion theory, this research investigates the importance of centering Blackness in efforts to address racial disparities in health and wellness.
The U.S. has so many premature births
Rates of preterm births in the United States are much higher than in other wealthy nations. A systematic review of global preterm birth published in 2019 showed that the U.S. was in the top ten for preterm births in 2014, ranking seventh, between Pakistan and Ethiopia. Another study found that in part, the “stresses of racism and income disparity” may be exacerbating bad outcomes for American moms and babies.
Healthy weight maintenance strategy in early childhood: The views of black African migrant parents and health visitors
In Europe and the US, childhood obesity is found to be higher in migrant children from black African communities and other visible minority ethnic groups. However, very little is known about the factors that contribute to the significant rates of obesity in these groups.
Pandemics: waves of disease, waves of hate from the Plague of Athens to A.I.D.S.
This article briefly surveys the history of pandemics in the West, contesting long-held assumptions that epidemics sparked hatred and blame of the ‘Other’, and that it was worse when diseases were mysterious as to their causes and cures. The article finds that blame and hate were rarely connected with pandemics in history. In antiquity, epidemics more often brought societies together rather than dividing them as continued to happen with some diseases such as influenza in modernity. On the other hand, some diseases such as cholera were more regularly blamed than others and triggered violence even after their agents and mechanisms of transmission had become well known.
Generation X and the Future Health of Latinos
What do the Hispanic Health Paradox and the Middle Class Hispanic Health Paradox tell us about the interweaving of economics, health, and racialization?

Healthcare Industry

Sexual and Reproductive Health Knowledge Gaps Identified by Black Women: Considerations for the Nurse Educator
Black women in the United States continue to carry a disproportionate burden of adverse sexual and reproductive health (SRH) outcomes, despite public health initiatives to alleviate SRH disparities.
Aileen Cole Stewart, a Black nurse during WW I and the 1918 pandemic.
The article offers information on Aileen Cole, one of the African American nurses, who volunteered to be frontline workers to halt the spread of the Spanish influenza in 1918, the same year the U.S. entered World War I. She helped to establish a field hospital in Cascade, Virginia, fight against the dangerous influenza. She maintained a dedicated relationship with the American Red Cross till her death in circa 1997.
This Med Student Wrote the Book on Diagnosing Disease on Darker Skin
Malone Mukwende created a handbook to help medical professionals identify how symptoms of disease show up differently on Black and Brown skin.
Mind the Gap: A handbook of clinical signs in Black and Brown skin
Mind the Gap is a clinical handbook of signs and symptoms in Black and Brown skin. The aims of the project were to highlight the lack of diversity in medical literature and education.

Maternity & Women's Health

Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act of 2021
To address the maternal health crisis in America, Congressional leaders have been fighting for critically important policies like 12-month postpartum Medicaid coverage, which would ensure moms and have access to the care and support they need and deserved for the full postpartum period.
The US Maternal Vulnerability Index (MVI)
The U.S. has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality among high-income countries, and rates have been increasing.
Ebony Health
Since 1945, EBONY magazine has shined a spotlight on the worlds of Black people in America and worldwide. Ebony Health covers issues related to the Black community from COVID to mental health, maternity to cancer.
One reason for the homicide crisis: Young people in pain (The Undefeated)
Article profiling Community activist Walter Patton, who created the Ghetto Therapy program in 2018. People from Cleveland’s Central neighborhood and other districts gather every Wednesday at the Clubhouse Essentials community center for programming that promotes mental and physical health and wellness. The Undefeated is the premier platform for exploring the intersections of race, sports and culture.
Authenticity at Work is a Trap with Jodi-Ann Burey (For Colored Nerds)
Each week, BFFs and cultural critics Brittany and Eric deconstruct the nerdier side of pop culture. This episode features Jodi-Ann Burey, a writer, speaker and host who joins the show this week to discuss the myth of authenticity at work, her Harvard Business Review article on imposter syndrome, and the importance of centering the experiences of disabled people of color.

Perspectives on Health & Wellness

Mental Health Stigma in the Black Community
Video: 6:46

Black History Month