by Kenny Anderson
Black Male Development & Advocacy
As Black men if we are not for ourselves who will be for us, if not now when?
Addressing Black Mental Health Issues
Monday, March 4, 2024
My Thoughts on Cornelius Jones Senseless Murder
Saturday, February 24, 2024
BLACK HISTORY MONTH: Racial Oppression is Why Black Men Are Missing!
by KenRay SunYaRu
“To a great extent, the personality of the African-American today has been shaped by our desires to escape the memory of the slave experience, to deny its existence. We don’t want to talk about it. We don’t want to come to terms with it. We don’t want to re-experience it psychologically. And therefore, our lives become defined by eternal escape and avoidance of reality and of history and of knowledge of who we are and how we came to be who and what we are. And consequently, we cannot act upon the reality of our history and we therefore guide our behavior and define ourselves in terms of a fantasy as history, and a misinterpretation of reality.” – Dr. Amos Wilson
Tuesday, February 6, 2024
Friday, February 2, 2024
Black Men Are Dying More From Sleep Apnea
By Ellen Goldbaum
The study identifies for the first time this significant racial health disparity in mortality resulting from sleep apnea. It was published online in February in Sleep Medicine.
“Despite several epidemiologic studies focusing on the prevalence, risk factors and clinical presentations of sleep apnea, no study, to our knowledge, has evaluated the disparity of sleep apnea-related mortality among different racial groups,” says Yu-Che Lee, first author and a medical resident in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB, who sees patients through the Catholic Health System.
To conduct the study, the researchers examined sleep apnea-related mortality for the years 1999-2019 from the National Center for Health Statistics, provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Sleep apnea is the most common sleep-related breathing disorder and has been associated with development of systemic hypertension, cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, and abnormalities in glucose metabolism.
Lee and his colleagues found a steady increase in mortality from the years 1999 to 2008, but then the rates flattened for Black females and for white males and females. That flattening suggests that medical management and public health interventions have helped stabilize outcomes in these groups.
Black males were the only group that saw a continuous increase in mortality from sleep apnea for the 21 years of the study.
Truly Concerning
“Our study showed that Black men were the only demographic group to have a continuous sleep apnea mortality increase in the last 10 years, which is truly concerning,” Lee says.
A combination of factors, including compliance with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines, likely contribute to this continuous increase in sleep apnea mortality among Black men, the researchers say.
“The literature suggests that compliance with CPAP is lower in patients who are Black, are of lower socioeconomic class and may have lower health literacy,” says M. Jeffery Mador, associate professor in the Department of Medicine in the Jacobs School and a study co-author, who sees patients through UBMD Internal Medicine.
“It is extremely likely that deaths occurred because the subjects were untreated or poorly compliant with therapy,” Mador continues. “CPAP therapy is highly effective and very few deaths, if any, would be expected if the subjects were adequately treated, followed and were able to use the therapy.”
He adds that clinicians may have opportunities to help. “We have noticed that there is room for improvement in terms of optimizing CPAP usage in our own patients who display the above factors,” he says.
Another striking finding in the study was what the researchers saw as “remarkable” geographic differences in mortality from sleep apnea. The highest age-adjusted mortality rates were seen in the Midwest for both genders in Black and white people, while the lowest mortality rates were seen among Black males in the West and Black females and white males and females in the Northeast.
Among states, the highest age-adjusted mortality rate from sleep apnea for Black people was recorded in Indiana, while Utah had the highest mortality rate for white people. New York had the lowest mortality rates for Black and white people.
An Underdiagnosed Problem
“Sleep apnea is relatively underdiagnosed in the general population, but this problem may be greater in Black patients,” Mador says.
“Even when diagnosed, successful treatment is lower in Black people than the general population,” he adds. “Untreated sleep apnea is associated with higher levels of hypertension, heart disease, stroke and diabetes, all of which are common in Black patients. Hopefully, increasing awareness and improving efficacy of treatment may lead to better health outcomes in this patient population.”
“This is the first study to demonstrate the disparities of sleep apnea-related mortality and different mortality trends between Black and white Americans,” Lee says. “These findings should give clinicians some insights into the problem to develop more tailored strategies and treatments to reduce racial disparities in outcomes from sleep apnea.”
Monday, January 29, 2024
Black Men Why Do Too Many Of Us Get Turned Against Each Other Through Crime And Violence?
"Many of us turn to crime, stealing, gambling, prostitution. And some of us are used by the white overlords downtown to push dope in the Negro community among our own people. Unemployment and poverty have forced many of our people into a life of crime. But the real criminal is in the City Hall downtown, in the State House, and in the White House in Washington, D.C. The real criminal is the white liberal, the political hypocrite. And it is these legal crooks who pose as our friends, force us into a life of crime, and then use us to spread the white man’s evil vices in our community among our own people." - Malcolm X
Thursday, January 25, 2024
Black Men Brief Thoughts on Discipline
Disciplines have direction 'forward or backward'; disciplines have qualities 'positive or negative'. For example, one person has a criminal discipline, while others have a writing, meditation, or exercising discipline.
Too often as Black men too many of us have socially acquired self-defeating, self-diseasing, and self-destructive disciplines. Too many Black men have a socialized 'oppression-maintaining' daily discipline of just gossiping, consuming, flossing, fronting, and entertaining; no discipline at all towards Black unity, healing, and self-determination.
Moreover, I've learned that one's discipline is driven by what one 'values'. We have to assess our disciplines: raising the questions are they truly 'important', beneficial, righteous, lasting, progressive, and worth the costs 'consequences'?
Yes, we have to keep in mind the relativity of disciplines and that they may require 'demand' change for new or added disciplines.
Black Men Let Us Stop Faking and Half-Baking
Action faking is the practice of confusing being busy with making actual progress towards an intended goal and often involves a lot of over-analyzing, planning, and stunting 'posturing', but very little meaningful and consistent actions.