Group Of Black Men Research Articles

Tailoring language for genitourinary function in patients with newly diagnosed prostate cancer to facilitate discussions in diverse populations and overcome health literacy barriers.

Poor comprehension of prostate cancer (PCa) medical terms can create barriers to PCa treatment discussions. The authors measured comprehension of PCa terms and its relationship to health literacy in a group of Black men who were newly diagnosed with PCa. Theyexaminedwhether tailoring communication with alternative colloquial words would be helpful and acceptable. Patients were recruited from urology clinics (N=152). After they met with their providers to discuss PCa treatment options, they participated in an educational supplement delivered as a structured interview. The supplement tailored PCa treatment information by allowing men to choose between colloquial and medical terms for genitourinary (GU) function. Health literacy was measured using the Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine, and comprehension of common PCa terms was assessed using published methods. Pearson correlation was used to estimate the association between health literacy and comprehension of PCa terms. Spearman rank correlation (r) was used to assess the relation between the total number of medical terms preferred (range, 0-10) and Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine scores (range, 0-66). Most patients (62%) had low health literacy, which was strongly correlated with their understanding of PCa terms (r=0.526; p<.001). Poor comprehension of many PCa terms established the need to use alternative language for GU function (only 20% knew the word incontinence). There was a statistically significant positive association between the number of medical terms preferred and health literacy (r=0.358; p<.001). A majority of patients (91%) preferred a mixture of medical and colloquial terms. Tailoring communications with colloquial terms for GU function was preferred by most patients regardless of health literacy.

Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine for Prostate Cancer among African Americans, African Immigrants and Caribbean Immigrants.

Black men have the highest rate of prostate cancer (PCa) morbidity and mortality in the US, and often receive delayed and/or poorer-quality treatment. This inequity has led many to turn to complementary and alternative medicine/therapies (CAM). However, little is known about the use of these therapies within the Black community. The purpose of this study was to describe types of CAM therapies used, and the reasons behind their use for overall health and PCa treatment and prevention among three groups of Black males, namely African Americans, Caribbean Immigrants and African Immigrants. This study used a mixed-methods design with a quantitative phase (n = 575) followed by a qualitative phase (n = 61) with participants recruited from various parts of the country. Results revealed differences among subgroups in CAM use for overall health and PCa, as well as differences in the types of CAM therapies used and differences in the reasons behind their use. The findings of this study reveal a prevalence of CAM use for overall health and PCa within three different groups of Black men and identifies the specific CAM used. There were significant differences in the types of CAM used by each subgroup for both overall health and PCa. This study also shows that there is value in looking at Black subgroups distinctively, for their rates of CAM use and reasons for use, are distinctly different.

Black Men's Experiences With Health care: Individuals' Accounts of Challenges, Suggestions for Change, and the Potential Utility of Virtual Agent Technology to Assist Black Men With Health Management.

Black men have the highest age-adjusted death rate of any major race-gender group in America. Understanding their perceived barriers to accessing health care may benefit future interventions working to increase Black men's health care engagement. Data collected from focus groups of Black men(N = 67), key informant interviews(N = 12), and interviews(N = 5) with participants who pilot tested an online health education system (called "Gabe") were analyzed to explore their health care experiences and how computer-based health programs might better assist Black men. Concerns pertaining to health care systems' failure to recognize the diversity among Black men, and physicians' lack of sociocultural awareness about the challenges they regularly face, were most salient. Building trust with providers was cited as being central to engagement, with Gabe users perceiving the system to be both trustworthy and accessible. Participants reported an openness to technology assisting with health management and provided suggestions of how online systems can meet the needs of Black men.

Abstract A041: Community engagement in the development of an m-health app utilizing a black male virtual health assistant (VHA) to promote colon cancer screening: An iterative study of credibility and likeability

Abstract Traditionally, promotion of colorectal cancer (CRC) screening among minority and rural populations including African American men was delivered by Community Health Workers (CHW), Patient Navigators, and decision aids (printed text or video media) at clinics. A novel approach to increase CRC screening of black men includes developing and utilizing a patient-centered, tailored message delivered via mobile-health (m-health) technology. In this study, a Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approach provided feedback on a Virtual Health Assistant (VHA) designed to deliver precision and personalized messages promoting the Fecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) for CRC screening. Focus groups of Black men were recruited to understand and employ their perceptions of a Black-male VHA. Specifically, these men identified source characteristics that would enhance the credibility of the VHA and likeability of an m-health app. The MAIN Model which examines how an interface features affect the user’s psychology through four Affordances: Modality, Agency, Interactivity, and Navigability was used to assess the presumed credibility of the VHA and likability of the app from the focus group transcripts. Each affordance triggers heuristic cues that stimulate a positive or negative perception of trustworthiness, believability, and understandability thereby increasing source credibility and likability. Data collected in the focus group included feedback on the different content modalities, both text and visual: size and font of the text, VHA appearance, voice, movement, diction, the environment as well as perceptions of the trustworthiness and expertise of the interface. Data related to interactivity and ease of navigation through the app was also collected and analyzed. All in all, 25 Black men from the community contributed to the development of three iterations of a Black male VHA over an eighteen-month time span. The final version of the Black male-VHA, ALEX is now part of an intervention to increase CRC screening among minority and rural populations. Citation Format: Danyell Wilson-Howard, Melissa Vilaro, Lauren Griffin, Fatemeh Travassoli, Mohan Zalake, Benjamin Lok, Francois Modave, Peter Carek, Thomas George, Janice Krieger. Community engagement in the development of an m-health app utilizing a black male virtual health assistant (VHA) to promote colon cancer screening: An iterative study of credibility and likeability [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Twelfth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2019 Sep 20-23; San Francisco, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2020;29(6 Suppl_2):Abstract nr A041.

Incapacitated Fatherhood: The Impact of Mass Incarceration on Black Father Identity

Despite the growing body of literature detailing the disproportionate social consequences of mass incarceration to black men, many of whom are fathers, insufficient attention has been given to the extent of damage on fatherhood and father identity in particular. This article examines the consequences of mass incarceration on father identity and the performance of fatherhood among a group of black men. Drawing from rich qualitative data, the study uses the lived experiences and perceptions of a group of formerly incarcerated black fathers. This research found that the incarceration experience significantly disrupted the performance of fatherhood among this group of men resulting in acute harm to their identity as fathers during incarceration and ongoing harm after release.

Yet We Live, Strive, and Succeed: Using Photovoice to Understand Community Members’ Experiences of Justice, Safety, Hope, and Racial Equity

Residents’ experiences provide rich insight into the factors that drive widening social and health disparities, and those experiences are not homogeneous. Only through attending to people’s lived experiences will society begin to see these as issues of the entire community, and only by engaging residents in the process of community change can the kinds of change that are needed ever be achieved. Photovoice is a participatory qualitative research method that gives voice to participants’ experiences and perspectives while simultaneously facilitating critical consciousness-raising for social action and social change. This study employed a Photovoice process to explore experiences and perspectives of residents and people working in organizations that serve West Louisville, and to facilitate dialogue and action leading to social change. Forty-three individuals across eight groups completed the Photovoice project, representing youth, older adults, LGBTQ people, faith leaders, educators, activists, and two groups of Black men. Analysis of photos and group dialogue within and across the eight groups identified several common themes that pointed at the historical and present structural racism in the community, the city’s lack of concern for the Black community, the importance of Black history, and the need for collective community action. The public Photovoice exhibit helped inform the subsequent agenda for the city’s Center for Health Equity.

CULTIVATING A PROFESSIONAL POSE:

AbstractIn this article I investigate how a group of Black men in college worked together to learn and practice the professional pose—professional styles and behaviors meant to navigate professional settings. I argue that these behaviors were adopted to preempt any potential discriminatory acts and would ideally disassociate them from the negative labels associated with Black men. Specifically, I examine how leaders of the group Uplift and Progress (UP) prepared other members and recruits by teaching them how to present themselves as professional Black men who were familiar with White middle-class practices. To further encourage their success, group members sought out opportunities to practice these styles in public. By cultivating this professional pose, they were able to claim their place at a White institution and distance themselves from the unfavorable stereotypes of Black men. This strategy also bolstered their reputation on campus and would ideally prepare them for the predominantly White workplace.

The “Colored Hero” of Harper's Ferry: John Anthony Copeland and the War against Slavery

John Anthony Copeland was one of five black men who joined John Brown in his famous armed attack at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859. Despite the numerous studies on Brown and the raid, Copeland has remained an obscure figure, due primarily to a lack of sources. Only a handful of his letters have survived, and contemporary news accounts tended to ignore the five black men. Thus, Steven Lubet faced a daunting task in writing this biography. To understand the brief life and motivations of this young man—Copeland was just twenty-five years old when the state of Virginia executed him on charges of murder and conspiracy to steal slaves—Lubet closely examined the places where Copeland lived and the people that he encountered. Born free in North Carolina in 1834, Copeland moved at the age of nine with his family to Oberlin, Ohio, a well-known abolitionist stronghold. There, he crossed paths with a number of important antislavery individuals connected to the national movement. In 1858, when federal officials began to search aggressively for fugitive slaves in Oberlin, Copeland responded by beating up a deputy federal marshal. Later, when slave hunters captured John Price, a fugitive slave and Oberlin resident, Copeland joined a mob to rescue him. In fact, Copeland stormed a building, with a group of black men, where Price was holed up, and freed him from his captors. Copeland then personally escorted Price to Canada and probably to Chatham, where Brown had recently held his abolition convention.

Retinal vessel caliber and its relationship with nocturnal blood pressure dipping status: the SABPA study.

Adverse changes in retinal microvasculature caliber are associated with incident hypertension, coronary heart disease and stroke. The absence of a nocturnal dipping in arterial pressure may induce changes throughout the vascular tree, including the retinal microvasculature, but the later link is not sufficiently studied. We explored the relationship between retinal vessel caliber and dipping status in a group of black and white teachers. The study included black (n=68) and white (n=81) men (24-66 years) from the SABPA study. We measured 24 h ambulatory blood pressure and the percentage mean arterial pressure dipping(%MAPdip) was calculated as (diurnal MAP-nocturnal MAP)/diurnal MAP × 100. Retinal images were captured and the central retinal artery equivalent (CRAE) and central retinal vein equivalent (CRVE) calculated. Black men demonstrated higher diurnal and nocturnal MAP (P⩽0.001) and a lesser %MAPdip compared with white men (P=0.047). When stratified by dipping status, black non-dippers (n=33) revealed an increased CRVE (P<0.001) compared with their dipper counterparts (n=35). In black men, CRVE was negatively (R2=0.38, β=-0.47, P<0.001) associated with %MAPdip independent of 24 h MAP or nocturnal MAP. CRVE also associated negatively with dipping status as a dichotomized variable (R2=0.29, β=-0.32, P=0.006), independent of 24 h MAP. These associations were absent in the white men. In conclusion, in this group of black men, a non-dipping blood pressure profile was associated with a larger CRVE, suggesting microvascular deterioration due to the absence of nocturnal dipping in blood pressure. This may add to our understanding of the stroke risk in black populations.

The Community Became an Almost Civilized and Christian One: John Stewart's Mission to the Wyandots and Religious Colonialism as African American Racial Uplift

ON SATURDAY MORNING JULY 5, 1911, the Reverend Dr. Edward L. Gilliam, an African American Methodist Episcopal pastor from Columbus, Ohio, led a group of black men, women, and children on a pilgrimage north to Upper Sandusky, Ohio. They went to pay homage to the Reverend John Stewart, who, according to church legend, founded the Methodist Episcopal Home Missionary Movement there a century before. As the pilgrims remembered the story, Reverend Stewart earned his saintly reputation for accomplishing what others had failed to do before him—he was the first to convert a previously “unconvertible” Wyandot community and laid the groundwork for the very first permanent mission of the American Methodist Episcopal Home Missionary Society. For the African American pilgrims for whom antiblack prejudice was a normal part of life in 1911, that Stewart was also African American was even more cause for celebration. To them, Reverend Stewart was a model black citizen and a shining example of the potential benefits of racial uplift ideology—a philosophy and set of tactics to lift African Americans economically, socially, and culturally into fuller U.S. citizenship. African Americans who espoused the tenets of racial uplift ideology advocated for Stewart’s enshrinement in the ever-growing pantheon of successful black professors, ministers, journalists, orators, and writers whose lives, they believed, were the evidence of racial progress and the best arguments for African Americans to be included in full American citizenship. Stewart was not only a model cleric and citizen according to black uplift leaders, but he also moved outside the world of black and white. Stewart went beyond uplifting the African Americans by extending his work to a Native American community. This showed black peoples’ worth not only within their own communities but also within the greater United States. To the pilgrims, Stewart was also a black agent, an apostle of American civilization. This article argues that in addition to striving toward middle-class respectability and economic independence, turn-of-thetwentieth-century black progressives put forth African American religious colonialism among Native Americans as evidence that black

Anthony Barboza in Conversation with Bill Gaskins

Anthony Barboza’s professional career began in in 1968 after he completed a tour of duty in the United States Navy, where he worked as a photojournalist. When he became a member of the legendary Kamoinge Workshop, formed in 1963 to address the under-representation of black photographers in the art world, he worked with master artists, intellectuals, and photographers. Also in 1968, a group of black men—plus one woman— formed Essence Communications Inc. A momentous triangulation of the women’s liberation movement, the cultural nationalism of African American people in the United States, and a late-twentieth-century black-capitalist movement, Essence magazine was designed to direct print editorial and advertising content toward African American women. It also provided the most important platform for Anthony Barboza, enabling him to play an influential role in transforming how African American, Latin American, and African and Caribbean women and men were represented in fashion and advertising in the United States. In this interview, we discuss such topics as how race plays a part in the fashion industry, hair styling, and working with models.

Getting Angry to Get Ahead: Black College Men, Emotional Performance, and Encouraging Respectable Masculinity

This article draws on two years of ethnographic fieldwork to explore how a group of black men on a college campus displayed anger in order to encourage other black men to adopt a respectable form of masculinity. Although prior research suggests that black men may work to avoid public displays of anger to evade negative stereotypes of black men, we uncover the contexts in which black men were comfortable expressing feelings of anger, frustration, annoyance, and irritation. Specifically, group leaders displayed these emotions when they observed recruits to their group engaging in actions or behaviors that threatened to reinforce certain stereotypes about black men.

Crossvalidation of Two Heart Rate–based Equations for Predicting V[Combining Dot Above]O2max in White and Black Men

The purpose of this investigation was to crossvalidate 2 equations that use the ratio of maximal heart rate (HRmax) to resting HR (HRrest) for predicting maximal oxygen consumption (VO2max) in white and black men. One hundred and nine white (n = 51) and black (n = 58) men completed a maximal exercise test on a treadmill to determine VO2max. The HRrest and HRmax were used to predict VO2max via the HRindex and HRratio equations. Validity statistics were done to compare the criterion versus predicted VO2max values across the entire cohort and within each race separately. For the entire group, VO2max was significantly overestimated with the HRindex equation, but the HRratio equation yielded no significant difference compared with the criterion. In addition, there were no significant differences shown between VO2max and either HR-based prediction equation for the white subgroup. However, both equations significantly overestimated VO2max in the black group. Furthermore, large standard error of estimates (ranging from 6.92 to 7.90 ml·kg(-1)·min(-1)), total errors (ranging from 8.30 to 8.62 ml·kg(-1)·min(-1)), and limits of agreement (ranging from upper limits of 16.65 to lower limits of -18.25 ml·kg(-1)·min(-1)) were revealed when comparing the predicted to criterion VO2max for both the groups. Considering the results of this investigation, the HRratio and HRindex methods appear to crossvalidate and prove useful for estimating the mean VO2max in white men as a group but not for an age-matched group of black men. However, because of inflated values for error, caution should be exercised when using these methods to predict individual VO2max.

The British link-up crew: Consumption Masquerading as Masculinity in the Dancehall

This paper examines identity construction and performance in Jamaican dancehall culture. It suggests that by utilizing publicly consumptive practices in the fluid space of the dancehall, the British Link-Up Crew draws on local and global factors to re-present a form of masculinity that has arisen organically from Jamaican society. I do not argue for the homogeneity of this form of masculine identity but suggest that this highly consumptive and performative identity reflects the socio-political and economic status of particular groups of black men in Jamaican society who are denied real access to resources and power in the formal structures in the society. These men draw on different and often symbolic strategies, including consumption, masquerade and performance, to seek and extend their identity and masculine status. Through popularized lyrics and exaggerated performance styles, popular dancehall culture re-presents these discourses of identity and provides a key space for the negotiation of black masculinity and identity in Jamaica within the race/class/colour and gendered structures of power that create and maintain hierarchies of personhood. My main argument is that the consumptive and performative sites and strategies of masquerade used by men in the dancehall, as exemplified by British Link-Up, provide an arena where these actors can re-present their economic capital and refine their masculinities as power brokers in the dancehall community.

Do Blacks With NIDDM Have an Insulin-Resistance Syndrome?

NIDDM has been postulated to be a component of a more generalized metabolic syndrome, Syndrome X, caused by insulin resistance. Although the components of the syndrome include glucose intolerance, hypertension, increased TG, and decreased HDL cholesterol, their relationship to insulin resistance and/or hyperinsulinemia is controversial. Recent investigations have shown racial differences in the relationship between insulin resistance and BP in nondiabetic populations. We assessed the relationship between insulin resistance and the other components of the syndrome in 37 black men and 53 black women with NIDDM. Insulin sensitivity was determined by measuring glucose disposal with the euglycemic insulin clamp technique with a 1 mU.kg-1.min-1 insulin infusion. We also determined fasting lipid profiles and BP. In this group of black men and women with NIDDM, 30% were insulin sensitive, and 70% were insulin resistant. No correlation existed between insulin sensitivity and sBP or dBP in either sex. Fasting serum TGs were inversely correlated with insulin sensitivity for both men (r = -0.401, P = 0.02) and women (r = -0.366, P = 0.008). Serum HDL cholesterol was highly correlated with insulin sensitivity for men (r = 0.421, P = 0.01) but not for women (r = 0.071, P = 0.62). Fasting serum TG levels and serum HDL-cholesterol levels were highly correlated in an inverse relationship in men (r = -0.368, P = 0.03), but not women (r = -0.199, P = 0.17). In summary, BP does not correlate with insulin resistance in blacks with NIDDM. Normal insulin sensitivity occurs in 33% of black men and 25% of black women with NIDDM.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Exploratory study of black psychological health

Three groups of black men and women (primarily student groups) participated in this exploratory study which was designed to help participants define psychological health or wellbeing for themselves. Spirituality and religion were cited as being primary components of psychological health for all groups. However, the results are only suggestive given the small number of subjects. Finally, I discuss a distinction between spirituality and religion, developmental implications, and the role of oppression in defining black psychological health.

The tuskegee syphilis study.

A GREAT deal of publicity was given in late 1971 and early 1972 to reports of unethical practices in a long-term study of so-called untreated syphilis in a group of black men in six Southern states. It was alleged that a United States Public Health Service study, also perhaps supported by certain foundations, had withheld effective treatment from these men and that many had died as a result. A cover story on human experimentation in Medical World News referred to subjects in the study as "victims" of the Tuskegee affair.1 In 1972 an ad hoc advisory panel was formed to . . .