Why Barbershops May Be Key to Improving Black Men ’s Health

Despite everything we know about how important it is to get regular health checkups, not many people like going to the doctor — so some physicians are coming up with creative ways to bring health care directly to their patients. In a study published in the journal Circulation, researchers led by the late Dr. Ronald Victor, a professor of medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, found that stationing pharmacists in barbershops significantly lowered the rates of hypertension among African-American men in the community. Over a year, men who got their hair cut at barbershops, where they could also see pharmacists who prescribed blood pressure-lowering medications, reduced their systolic pressure by nearly 30 mmHg, compared to 7mm Hg among men who went to shops where barbers talked to their clients about blood pressure but encouraged them to see their doctors. At the start of the study, all of the 319 men at 52 different barbershops in Los Angeles county had hypertension. Each shop was randomly assigned to either have a pharmacist visit every few weeks or to serve as a control, in which barbers encouraged their clients to check their blood pressure and see their doctors if they needed treatment. African-American men are at higher risk of developing hypertension than than people of other ethnicities, partly because they are less likely to see their doctors for diagnosis and treatment. Victor, who passed away in September, had conducted research in Dallas testing the idea of...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Heart Disease Source Type: news