Prometheus 6

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

For more information contact Gigi Gregory, 415. 581-2451
Reparations and Black Health Meeting Set

SAN FRANCISCO---Reparations and Black health will be discussed this week by two leading health care specialists in the national black reparations movement

"There has never been a point in our history when African-Americans had equal or near equal health status with whites," says Vernellia Randall a University of Dayton (Ohio) law professor who specializes in health care issues. "Disproportionately, we die at a higher rate from every disease or condition except suicide. Hypertension, diabetes, cancer, liver disease-you name it," she said.

Dr. Jewel Crawford from Atlanta's Center for Disease Control served as the chairperson for the central organizing committee of the African and African Descendents Conference against Racism which met in Barbados last year. That conference was a follow up to the World Conference against Racism held in Durban, South Africa, the previous year. She is scheduled to address how the Atlantic Slave Trade impacted the physical and psychological health of generations of African-Americans.

According to Randall, the call for reparations for descendants of slaves, a major theme of the Durban conference, which the U.S. boycotted, "would be a good justification for doing this, to prioritize health issues for blacks. It's not that we don't know what has to be done, it's do we have the will to do it?"

Additional speakers will include Cynthia Selmar from the San Francisco Dept. of Public Health's African-American Health Initiative project and Jean Damu, chair of the California Coalition for H.R. 40, Congressman John Conyers' African-American Reparations Study Bill and the San Francisco chapter of NCOBRA.

The meeting will be held Thursday, June 19, 6pm-9pm, African-American Art & Cultural Complex, 762 Fulton St., San Francisco.

TheBlackList - Open Forum
Open Discussion: discuss any topic - any subject matter.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 6/14/2003 07:46:23 AM |