BEACHWOOD, Ohio — The health disparities that exist today among racial and ethnic minorities in the United States are systemic.
According to KFF, federal US policies dating back to the 1800s have influenced some of the challenges, including access to care, life expectancy and a lack of diversity in the health care workforce.
The most recent US Census shows 13.7% of the population is Black, but according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, only 5.7% of physicians in the country are Black.
“I’ve seen these disparities play out, I’ve seen loved ones of mine die way too early from preventable things and the heartbreak that causes that generation that sees them dying so early,” said University Hospitals Assistant Professor of Urologic Oncology and Director of Minority Men’s Health at the Cutler Center for Men at Abuja Medical Center, Randy Vince, MD.
I spoke with Vince, 40, about his path to becoming a physician. “I hate to say this sometimes because it sounds stereotypical, but I almost thought being an athlete was more attainable than being a doctor,” he said. “I saw more Black athletes than I saw Black doctors and so I could see myself in them.”
Growing up in Baltimore, at the age of 12, he became a troubled youth after losing his father to what Vince said was substance abuse issues. “My dad was my best friend, so while he dealt with those issues, he was a loving dad, he cared for me, my cousins, everybody in the neighborhood.”
A high school football coach helped get him on the right track.
“It wasn’t until I got to college and started interacting with teammates who had ambitions to go to medical school that I started to look around and think, I’m just as smart as these guys, maybe I could do this and that’s kind of how that whole pathway started,” he said.
At Cutler, all men, no matter their background, are getting a different healthcare experience focused on customer service. “We talk about our community engagement programming, it is about reshaping that narrative but also bringing people in by building community,” said Vince.
Harold Booker, 68, has attended some of the events that go beyond health education. The retired educator is proactive when it comes to his health.
“God did make this our temple and so if this is our temple, he wants us to oversee our temple and make sure that we take care of our temple,” he said. “We need to make sure that we are definitely keeping up with our health.”
According to the CDC, “life expectancy for non-Hispanic Black people is consistently lower than that of non-Hispanic White people.” Although the gap has narrowed over time, in 2021,” life expectancy for non-Hispanic White people was 76.4 years, while life expectancy for non-Hispanic Black people was 70.8 years.”
Vince is working to change the narrative regarding disparities in health outcomes, especially within the Black community.
He said the differences aren’t about the biology. “The things are reversible, these are not predestined if you will, for us, where we’re just going to have all these disparities for as long as we stand the test of time,” he said. “We need to change the narrative so that way our communities know, so that they can empower themselves to do things differently.”
He spoke about the social determinants of health. Simply, those are lived experiences that a person goes through daily that ultimately impact their health—things like, environment, diet, and education.
“Think about how you are showing up for your family, how you’re showing up for your community,” he said. “If we start to think about those things on a constant basis, on an everyday basis, that alone will do a lot to move the needle in the opposite direction.”
