Alert date November 1, 2020

VISIT WEBSITE

CLICK HERE TO OPEN RELATED DOCUMENT

Covid 19 Related Resource

Contact: MASK UP (EVEN WHEN OUTSIDE) – WASH YOUR HANDS – SOCIAL DISTANCE -SANITIZE

Why 7 Deadly Diseases Strike Blacks Most, © 2005 WebMD, Inc. All rights reserved

Health care disparities heighten disease differences between African-Americans and white Americans.

Several deadly diseases strike black Americans harder and more often than they do white Americans.
Why?
“Genes definitely play a role. So does the environment in which people live, socioeconomic status — and, yes, racism,” says Clyde W. Yancy, MD, associate dean of clinical affairs and medical director for heart failure/transplantation at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Some numbers
• Diabetes is 60% more common in black Americans than in white Americans. Blacks are up to 2.5 times more likely to suffer a limb amputation and up to 5.6 times more likely to suffer kidney disease than other people with diabetes.
• African-Americans are three times more likely to die of asthma than white Americans.
• Deaths from lung scarring — sarcoidosis — are 16 times more common among blacks than among whites. The disease recently (2004) killed former NFL star Reggie White at age 43.
• Despite lower tobacco exposure, black men are 50% more likely than white men to get lung cancer.
• Strokes kill 4 times more 35- to 54-year-old black Americans than white Americans. Blacks have nearly twice the first-time stroke risk of whites.
• Blacks develop high blood pressure earlier in life — and with much higher blood pressure levels — than whites. Nearly 42% of black men and more than 45% of black women aged 20 and older have high blood pressure.
• Cancer treatment is equally successful for all races. Yet black men have a 40% higher cancer death rate than white men. African-American women have a 20% higher cancer death rate than white women.