Here’s what you can do to participate in the 2008 Black Future Month Campaign:

1) Spread the word! Email chains, word-of-mouth, putting links on your own website to the docgurley.com Black Future Month page–all of these steps are important and relatively easy.

2) Work your contacts! Do you know anyone who writes a column, does a radio show, is senior in a media company? How about someone who is a community leader who can be encouraged to discuss this topic at a town-hall type meeting? How about a friend who knows a friend who knows someone on a TV show? How about someone who just has a blog? Work that list and let’s see how far we can get, pushing this topic into the public’s consciousness.

3) Send letters requesting change. Look below for a sample letter, but feel free to write your own. First-person stories carry a lot of weight. After the sample letter, below, is a list of names and addresses where you might want to send a letter.

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Sample letter: Copy and paste into a document, print, stamp, and mail (better) or copy and paste into an email and send to contacts listed below. You can download a PDF version here: PDF Format Black Future Month Letter and a Microsoft Word version here: Black Future Month Letter

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Dear

I am writing to request that you prioritize the development and funding of a long-term, detailed, multi-year, prospective health study of predominantly African Americans, like the Framingham study, except set in an African American community. I am requesting that you do this based on issues of fairness, science, and health outcomes.

1) Fairness–almost all that is known about health in the last twenty years has been derived from a relatively small number of expensive, long-term, detailed multi-year prospective studies, such as the Doctor’s Health study, the Nurses’ Health study, and the Framingham study. These studies have, historically, been conducted in predominantly white communities. As a tiny minority within these studies, African-American patients’ priorities and diseases are forced to take second place. Many issues affecting the African-American community are left unanswered. Prospective, longitudinal studies of large populations are quite expensive, and, in terms of pure monetary fairness, African Americans have been left out. It’s time to invest in finding answers for the African American community.

2) Science–A large, long-term, detailed, predominantly African American study is required to adequately answer health problems that are a priority to the African American community, such as premature births, asthma, early and severe prostate cancer, early and severe breast cancer and a host of other unique illnesses, such as sickle cell and sarcoidosis. Large numbers of people, followed long-term, are required to determine the factors that contribute to both the onset, and the prevention of these problems. Continuing to fund large studies where African Americans are only a small minority means that these issues cannot be adequately addressed in a scientifically valid way–if they are addressed at all.

3) Health outcomes–Diseases that affect the African American community affect the health of all Americans, directly and indirectly. Developing a long-term, prospective study of African-Americans can answer questions about diseases that affect everyone, and may lead to an earlier discovery of interventions that work, due to the higher rates of disease in the African American population. Answers to questions about high rates of breast cancer, prostate cancer, infant mortality, premature birth, and asthma can improve the health of all Americans.

Finally, for any funding of a long-term, prospective trial of African Americans to succeed, leaders in the African American community must be involved in 1) setting research priorities, 2) selection of the community to be recruited and 3) long-term retention and follow-up of study subjects.

I look forward to hearing your response to this pressing topic,

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Names and addresses:

Find your senators and representatives here.

To contact the NIH (the primary source of research funding), first find the name of the person, then search for their contact information here. Find the name of the current Director of the NIH here. Find out who sits on the Director’s Council of Public Representatives here. To request an interview with the head of the NIH, contact the NIH Office of Communications and Public Liaison at (301) 496-5787

Contact the CDC (a secondary source of research funding) here.

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Background info: Existing attempts to create a predominantly African American cohort, prospective study included the AASK (African American Study of Kidney Disease and Hypertension) study (specific to kidney failure, ended in 2002, then refunded for continuation), the Southern Community Cohort Study (starting now, for people aged 40-79, looks at cancer only, 90,000 people, two-thirds of them African American, involves one 50 minute interview, brief contact later, and five years of funding at the present time) and the Multiethnic/Minority Cohort Study (established in Hawaii and Los Angeles in 1993-1996 to explore the relationship of diet and other lifestyle factors to cancer; cohort is >215,000 men and women of African-American, Japanese, Latino, Native Hawaiian, and Caucasian origin).