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Black men suffer from mostly preventable diseases
And there he was, live on CNN, talking about a topic rarely heard on national television — men’s health.
As founder of the National Black Men’s Health Network, Dr. Jean Bonhomme has traveled the country, speaking to small church groups and community forums, preaching about the need for men to take control of their health.
His appearance on CNN, watched by millions of viewers, was no different from when he spoke four days later at the Massachusetts Medical Society’s Fourth Annual Symposium on Men’s Health last June.
When asked on CNN why men don’t visit doctors as regularly as women, Dr. Bonhomme’s answer was right on point.
“There’s been a lot of public information about breast cancer and Pap smears, but we haven’t been talking about what’s been happening to men,” Dr. Bonhomme said. “So a lot of the public remains ignorant about what the issues are.
“In addition,” he explained, “the way that males are raised is that when a boy is eight years old and he skins his knee, they tell him ‘Brave boys don’t cry.’ And by the time he’s 50 and having chest pain, he says it’s just indigestion. Males have an expectation that if something hurts, don’t bother with it. It’ll go away by itself. Unfortunately in middle age, that doesn’t work anymore.”
Dr. Bonhomme is not exaggerating, particularly when it comes to African American men.
Black male death rates are higher for many leading causes of death. In Massachusetts alone, black men die from kidney disease at more than twice the rate of white men and more than three times the rate of white women. The rate of HIV infections for black men is six times higher than for white men, 15 times the rate for white women and almost three times the rate for black women.
Incidences of heart disease and cancer, specifically prostate cancer, are significantly higher among black men. Forty percent of black men die prematurely from cardiovascular disease, compared to 21 percent of white men.
Medical troubles are not the only chronic issues facing black men. Their chances of being murdered are 13 times greater than black women, ten times greater than white men, and 28 times greater than white women.
It’s little wonder then that black males are expected to die at the age of 69 years old, the shortest life expectancy of any American group. That is about six years less than white men, seven years less than black females, and 11 years less than white women.
To help close the growing health care disparities, Dr. Bonhomme established the National Black Men’s Health Network, a non-profit educational organization, in 1986. Its goal is to spread the word on health care. The real tragedy, health experts point out, is that most of these diseases are preventable with early screenings or lifestyle changes.
Over the last ten years, men’s health has received an increased amount of attention. Back in 1994, President Clinton proclaimed the week before Father’s Day “National Men’s Health Week.” And more recently federal lawmakers are considering the creation of an Office of Men’s Health within the Department of Health and Human Services to mirror the Office of Women’s Health. That office is credited with improving the lives of countless females.
Part of the problem with men’s health is federal funding. In 2000, for instance, the National Cancer Institute spent nearly $425 million on breast cancer research. The Institute spent only $190 million — less than half — on prostate cancer research. The gap is even more noticeable on spending for outreach and screening. The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spent $185 million on breast and cervical cancer programs in 2000, but only $11 million on prostate cancer.
But the larger problem, Dr. Bonhomme argues, is men themselves.
“Society has a great admiration for pain without complaint,” Dr. Bonhomme told the Banner during an interview. “We like men who are high performance, play sports and have good paychecks. The football player who keeps playing or the baseball player that gets hit hard and doesn’t flinch is revered.”
Unlike women, many of whom start regular appointments with gynecologists in their teens and receive other screenings while there, men often delay monitoring their health until after their early twenties or when their employers provide health insurance.
Black men in particular are more likely to have an irregular connection with a doctor, and thus fail to have routine checkups and seek medical attention only during an emergency. By then, it’s often too late to provide any real help.
The problem was underscored six years ago in a study sponsored by the Commonwealth Fund, a private nonpartisan foundation that supports independent research on health. Only 58 percent of men said they saw a physician within the past year. Less then 20 percent said they would seek help promptly if in pain or sick, 24 percent said they would delay seeking help, and 17 percent said they would delay going to the doctor for a week or more.
Health officials say that several factors contribute to the relatively poor state of black men’s health: lack of affordable health services, poor health education, cultural and linguistic barriers, poverty, jobs that don’t provide health insurance and insufficient medical and social services that cater specifically to African American men.
Dr. Bonhomme strongly suggested that men should start visiting a doctor as early as possible. “Men need to get base lined at a young age,” said Dr. Bonhomme, explaining that an initial checkup provides a comparison point for future checkups. “If for most of your life your blood sugar was at 100 and all of a sudden, it soars to 200, then we have a problem. The idea of what’s normal varies from individual to individual.”
When men do seek health care, social taboos or embarrassment can prevent them from candidly discussing health issues with their doctors. And lifestyle plays a large role in preventive health. “Eighty percent of the way we die is related to the way we choose to live our lives,” Bonhomme says.
Take the HIV/AIDS crisis. Although African Americans represent only 13 percent of the U.S. population, they account for 40 percent of the roughly 945,000 AIDS cases diagnosed since the start of the epidemic 25 years ago. In 2004 alone, African Americans accounted for about half of the new cases. Compared to all American men, black men are five times more likely to die of HIV/AIDS.
Though not the leading cause of death, the homicide rate for black males is staggering. Statistics show that over the course of a lifetime, a black male has a 1 in 30 chance of being murdered, compared to white males who have a 1 in 179 rate. Homicide ranks 13th in leading causes of death overall, but for black men of all ages, it ranks 5th and is the second leading cause of death for black males between the ages of 15 and 24.
Given the enormity of the problems, it’s surprising then that more attention is given to sexual dysfunctions.
On CNN, Dr. Bonhomme had another straightforward answer.
“I think that the decline in erectile ability that occurs is more linked to disease than it is linked to actual age,” Dr. Bonhomme said, “because what increases with age is a frequency of diseases that can impair sexual performance, specifically the frequency of diabetes, the frequency of hypertension, the frequency of cholesterol.”
“These diseases can disturb the circulation that enables a man to get an erection,” Dr. Bonhomme continued. “And what men need to realize is that if they are losing the ability to perform sexually, it could be an indication of something much more global going on with their bodies. And they need to be checked out.”
Dr. Bonhomme went on. “We need to make it a priority to make time for ourselves. We need to get proper exercise, we need to get proper rest and we need to pay attention to proper diets. We need to make our health a priority because it not only affects us, but the people who care about us. When we become disabled, who has to take care of us?” |
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